I did a circadian reset and got my mum/marriage mojo back

"I feel strangely floaty and detached. Like the undercurrent of white noise and caffeine that usually fuels my days has taken a leave of absence."

“Muuuum! Muuuuuuum! Mu-mu-mu-mu-MUm!”

For a moment, I’m disoriented - I can hear the staccato cries of my toddler, but it’s not making sense - the room is different, and it sounds like he’s … outside the window?

Shaking the tendrils of sleep from myself, I sit up and see my husband, already awake, grinning. 

“It’s just a chicken,” he laughs. “You napped for two hours!”

We’re alone. Just the two of us. And for the first time in nearly a decade, I’ve just had a leisurely lunchtime nap, in a decadent little farm cottage, with nothing but the soundtrack of gently falling rain (and an inquisitive chicken) to rouse me. 

I’m more relaxed than I have been in forever. 

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Totally blissed out... with the chooks! Image: Supplied

Escape from reality

That old parenting adage that ‘the days are long but the years are short’ neglected to mention the nights - simultaneously too short and endless, depending on the quality of sleep you’re getting, and chronically, terrifyingly damaging to your overall well-being as a parent. 

This is why, when the opportunity arose for my husband and I to get away to the Byron hinterland for a two-night escape sans tiny sleep-saboteurs, we jumped at it faster than you can say:

"slam-the-door-to-the-Kia-Carnival-before-they-realise-we’re-leaving-and-try-to-jump-in!"

We headed for Heartwood Farm, a tiny cottage on a working cattle farm in Federal, a village in the NSW Northern Rivers. The plan? Sleep, eat and repeat for 48 glorious hours. 

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Parents: we have a problem  

Sleep deprivation - or at the very least, a lack of the kind of nourishing, quality sleep we all need to operate at our best - is hurting Australian parents. 

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, we should be getting between seven and nine hours of quality sleep per night. 

Parents of young children - particularly mothers - are estimated to fall short of this figure by an alarming seven hours per week, something that doesn’t change until their youngest child turns three. 

I am a mother of three young children - aged two, four and eight - and it is a rare thing indeed for all three of them to wake up in their own beds in the morning. 

Sure, they start off there, but at varying times during the night they’ll either cry out for myself or my husband, or else not-so-silently creep under the covers with us, falling immediately back to sleep with their bony little feet wedged between one of my ribs and an internal organ. 

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Instead of focussing on fighting the losing battle of keeping the kids in their beds, my husband and I have evolved a number of ways to cope with the poor quality of sleep we get each night - key among them a shiny new espresso machine that gets a hefty workout each day.

Recently though, listening to a podcast about sleep (I like to torture myself by researching all the ways I’m failing my body in this department), I came across a study that found it’s possible to ‘reset’ your circadian rhythm in just a few nights. 

The study followed university students who were taken camping for a week. After just two nights of going to bed just after dark and waking up with the sun, their melatonin production started to change in line with the natural sunrise and sunset, and bring them more in line with a healthier approach to sleep. More impressive is the fact that these changes lasted for several weeks after they returned home from the camping trip.

Happy little parents. Image: Supplied

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Our own experiment 

Obviously, the parameters of our getaway to Heartwood Farm were slightly different. Far from camping, we’re shacked up with luxe furnishings, fine Cultiver linens, crystal decanters filled with local liquors and the kind of silence that engulfs you. 

On our first morning, the plunge pool and an orchard of citrus just outside the cottage doors entice us to stay outdoors for a while, but with nothing but a dinner reservation at pensioner-hour (why waste valuable nighttime hours being out of bed?) the king-sized haven of pillows beckons. Which is how I find myself waking up, two hours later, not knowing who or where I am, but feeling a sense of peace I already know I’d pay big money to recapture. 

The cosy little stay. Image: Supplied

The rest of our stay passes in much the same fashion - cheese and wine and games of UNO to see out the rainy weather that has set in, another dip in the heated pool, then sleep - glorious sleep, which we dive into greedily, wholly, embracing it like a lost lover. 

By the time we have to check out (Nicole, Heartwood’s lovely owner, has kindly let us extend our checkout time until 1pm to maximise our rest time) I feel strangely floaty and detached. Like the undercurrent of white noise and caffeine that usually fuels my days has taken a leave of absence. 

It’s an hour’s drive back to our home, where our kids await, no doubt ready to make a withdrawal from the sleep bank we’ve just deposited into, but somehow I’m hopeful that at least a little slice of the peace we’ve felt this past 48 hours will remain. 

If not, something tells me we’ll be back at Heartwood for another taste before too long.

Writer stayed as a guest of Heartwood Farm.  

Originally published as I did a circadian reset and got my mum/marriage mojo back