How Alarm Clocks are Ruining my Sleep

Something ridiculous that happened at our house last week. At least twice.

Our two-year old, aka "The Middle Bear", has an alarm clock in his room. My husband Greg and I like it there since we often want to know the time.

The Middle Bear likes to play with it. In fact, he often (inadvertently) sets the alarm.

Well, as you probably know, alarm clocks default to midnight (12:00 am) as the alarm setting. And of course, this one was set to the default setting.


This means that the alarm has gone off at midnight at least two times this past week. (And it might have happened more but I can't remember due to my sleepless fog.) I didn't notice it the first time until 1:08 am, when The Littlest Bear, our 7-week old, woke up. I turned off the alarm, which had apparently been going off for over an hour. The Middle Bear was not awake.

This is how I’ve witnessed The Middle Bear sleeping recently:

He’s slept like this before (a little over a year ago):

So anyway, back to the alarm going off for over an hour…I asked him about it the next day and didn't really get a coherent answer...he said he had cried in his crib, which made me feel awful! But he may have been referring to another time he cried in his crib...I have no way of knowing.

The buzzing of the alarm happened again last Saturday night. I didn't notice it until 12:26 am. So it had been going off for 26 minutes. Again, The Middle Bear was not awake.

So the next day, I changed the alarm to go off at noon instead of midnight. That way I didn't have to move the clock out of his room, but if he ever sets it again, it'll go off when no one is sleeping instead of in the middle of the night.

I can't believe it has taken me [at least] two nights of incessant buzzing to reset the darn thing. Like I said, I can't remember if there's been another instance of the alarm going off in the middle of the night.

I also can't believe The Middle Bear has not awoken during the buzzing.