My kids have become accustomed to falling asleep with the air conditioner on. It’s gotten to the point where it’s hard for me to put them to sleep without it, as they become restless and complain that they’re too hot. It could be on the coldest day of the year and they’d still demand that the air con was on so that they could sleep. It was probably a mistake conditioning them to need that at the beginning of their sleep training, but oh well.
As you can imagine, this means I need my air conditioning working perfectly, year-round. Any parent would understand how hard it is to get the kids to sleep even under ideal circumstances, and so every three months like clockwork, I get a routine air conditioning service. Near Canberra, where we live, the technicians are the best in the business, and I have them to thank every time I get eight hours of sleep.
Once, very early on in this sleep saga, my air conditioning was broken for over a week. This was before I had realised my kids relied on the air conditioner to sleep, and I got the shock of my life that first night when all three of my children cried and screamed through the entire night. Obviously to begin with, I had no idea what was wrong with my children. It was when they started screaming that it was too hot and that they needed air, that I caught on. I called the local air conditioning technician the morning after, but couldn’t get an appointment for an entire week. I can’t even begin to explain the relief I felt when I finally got the air conditioning system repairs. Canberra honestly felt like heaven in that moment.
It’s safe to say that I learnt very quickly after that. I haven’t gone a night since that ordeal without the air conditioning on, but I’ve also slept a lot better than all my friends with three kids, too. You win some, you lose some.