A 10 minute snooze, 4:30am meditations and nightly naps: A day in the life of Edwina Bartholemew.

Since becoming pregnant Edwina Bartholomew’s bosses at Channel 7 have given her a sleep-in, but that doesn’t stop people being fascinated by the early hours she keeps.

The 36-year-old used to set her alarm anywhere between 2:45 and 3:30am, but now it’s a leisurely 4:30am.

“It sounds silly but that extra hour – anything out of the twos and threes makes a big difference. So I feel really different and good by comparison,” she told Mamamia.

Despite working early mornings for 15 years, Edwina has never quite got a handle on the whole “prep before bed” idea.

Breakfast is squeezed in-between moments she’s on screen. Post continues after video.

“Every morning it’s a scramble. I don’t know why,” she laughed.

She’s also a snoozer. In fact she factors a 10 minute snooze into her morning routine.

“Only one though, anymore than that and I am capable of falling straight back into a deep sleep. So I can’t press snooze more than once,” she said.

Once out of bed, Edwina does 20 minutes of meditation using the Insight Timer app, which is something she started doing when she and husband Neil were trying to fall pregnant.

"The app just counts down 20 minutes, that's all it does, nothing fancy. There's no music or Tibetan drumming or anything. In an ideal world I'd do it twice a day," she told Mamamia.

Once that's done she's out the door, and luckily with no traffic on the roads the trip to work is a breeze.

She parks her car at the office, and thanks to the bleary-eyed fumble for clothes in the morning tends to rock up to the makeup chair looking a bit dishevelled.

"Which is okay at 5am. But then the sun comes up and people are in the office and you get changed [after being on air] you think 'oh, there are people around now and I somehow have to get out of this building looking bedraggled'," she said.

Edwina grabs the morning papers and any notes she has to be across for the show before heading to makeup for an hour.

She used to smash back 3 to 4 coffees a day but cut out caffeine completely when she realised she was waking up with a headache on the weekend if she slept in. She now has about one a week under the direction of her obstetrician.

"I get on really well with my makeup artist. So we chat, I read the papers. It's a really gentle way to start the day and ease in," she said.

 

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Three heads are better than one. The double up with @melissagigliottihairnmup and @hairandmakeupbyariela on this rainy Monday @sevenstyling #sun7

A post shared by Edwina Bartholomew (@edwina_b) on Jun 23, 2019 at 1:37pm PDT

"Then it's literally straight on air because I am always running late because of all the things I just mentioned about not being organised. So I am usually ready to go to air with like one minute's notice," Edwina admitted.

She now starts on Sunrise an hour into the show at 6:45am thanks to her sleep-in, and says she's usually done by about 10am. She gets breakfast at 7am while on the job and opts for either an omelette or some eggs on toast - something hearty.

But this is where any kind of "day in the life routine" goes out the window.

"Some days I am lucky enough to finish by 10am, and I can go to the gym or do whatever. Other days I might have charity commitments so then I stick around in the city. Or I might MC a lunch or host something."

"Other days I might be filming a story, last week I was out with the police dog squad filming a story, before that I was out at the Parkes dish. I had to leave straight after the show and drove there (which is four and a half hours). I filmed the story, had a couple of meetings on the drought and then came back at 10pm at night," she said.

But the good thing about Edwina's ever-changing schedule is that it's a lot more planned than the regular news reporters you might see contributing to the 6pm bulletin.

"Unlike a news reporter where you'd be dispatched to a story each day, my schedule is much more planned out because the stories are features so you can lock it into your calendar ahead of time. I am very lucky in that way because it's highly flexible," she explains.

On the days when she's home at a normal hour, Edwina does have an end of day wind-down routine which she thinks is "pretty boring really".

She tries to walk the dog every afternoon. She's walking the City2Surf with her sister in a week's time, so getting some steps in every day is something she's trying to keep on top of.

 

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@mateandme clearly takes after his father ????

A post shared by Edwina Bartholomew (@edwina_b) on Jul 12, 2018 at 8:26pm PDT

"I committed to doing City2Surf with Cure Cancer before I fell pregnant, so I wasn't sure what I'd be able to do. But its been a good thing to keep me accountable and push me out the door to go for a walk each day," she told Mamamia.

Cooking dinner doesn't usually take that long. "I am not a fantastic cook so it's a short process," she laughed. After dinner, Edwina settles in for a night of news.

"I watch the 6pm news, and then I tend to watch the 8pm ABC news combined with The Project and then I watch 7:30 and then I tend to go to bed, unless I am watching a particular show I want to binge watch," she said.

"I am notorious for falling asleep on the couch," she added.

Napping is something that's been creeping into Edwina's routine more and more since becoming pregnant. She's relieved that she spent her first trimester on stories overseas (the arrival of the royal baby in Windsor and then Cannes Film Festival in France) which meant she worked night hours and got to sleep in.

Now that she's further along, an extra hour in the morning and a few more naps than usual gets her through the day.

Edwina says after so many years in breakfast TV she's definitely a converted morning person and considers herself "a great lunch companion and a boring dinner companion".

"I start fading in the evenings, which makes for a very lame social life," she said.

As for a bedtime routine, Edwina has one slightly strange obsession that she does every night like clockwork.

"My favourite thing to do before I got to bed is - even if I am going to bed at the same time - I still count the number of hours sleep that I am going to get. I strangely go to bed on like an even number so I can easily calculate how many hours I am going to get," she told Mamamia.

What Edwina loves about her job, is that there's never a day that is the same.

"I have two more overseas trips before I have a baby in December, and they came up out of the blue. That's what so fabulous about what I do [for work]. Every single 'day in the life' for me, is completely different."

On Sunday 11th August, Edwina will be walking with the Cure Cancer's team in the City2Surf. They fund early-career cancer researchers and you can check them out here. You can support Edwina's fundraiser here.