Early Riser

Should you try to go back to sleep -- or cut your losses and get a start on the day? It's a tough call. If you're not too tired, it might be easier just to get up. But missing that last two hours of sleep means you'll miss much of the REM sleep that helps you focus and feel on the ball the next day. Wake up in the midst of that REM sleep, and you'll have problems focusing and thinking clearly.

Solution: If you're chronically sleep-deprived because your child rises before the sun, odds are you'll fall back to sleep pretty quickly, probably within five minutes, say experts. Do it: You need whatever extra shut-eye you can get, even if it's not the most restorative sleep. "When my daughter was a year old, I noticed that when I brought her into bed with us for the five a.m. feeding, she slept longer and more soundly, usually until seven," says Wendi Gilbert, coproducer of the video Sleep Like a Baby: What Every Parent Needs to Know About Babies & Sleep, and a mom of two in San Francisco. "It was never our plan to co-sleep, but at some point it came down to trying to get the most sleep possible."

But if you try to go back to sleep without success for 20 minutes or so, you may want to get up. The harder you try, the less likely you are to doze again. When you do arise, expose yourself to bright light as soon as possible, to reset your body's internal clock so that it registers daytime and helps you become alert. "When my daughter was a baby, I'd take a brisk walk with her first thing in the morning, then a shower," says Tracy Kinsey of Davie, Florida. "That always woke me up and got me ready to face my other job."

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