Parker Week 32 – He Slept!!!
August 12, 2009
A few nights ago I thought my baby might never sleep again. He slept three hours that night, and they were not consecutive. I’m not sure how I made it through work without falling asleep in my chair. But last night, oh last night was blissful. Zach put Parker to sleep just after 7pm. We’ve got a good bedtime routine now – bath, dinner, books, bottle, bed. Xander was in bed and books read and lights out just about 8pm (after two trips to the bathroom and a lengthy discussion of what we were doing tomorrow). Zach and I were both in bed by 11pm. Xander woke me around 4ish looking for his binky, but that was a quick trip.
Then at 5am I woke myself, completely paranoid that Parker must have stopped breathing. Usually he wakes us pretty consistently 3 times each night. Once around 11pm, then again sometime between 2am and 3am, and then finally around 5am. If we’re lucky, we can get him back to sleep for another hour or so after that last time. This has been our routine for a few months now. It’s not great, but we’re used to it, and we’ve been hopeful that someday soon Parker would start to grow out of at least one of those middle of the night wake-ups.
Knowing that I would not be able to return to slumber without checking, and also knowing that I had a 50% chance of waking the baby up, I went into Parker’s room to check. He had somehow done a complete 180 degree flip in his crib, and was sleeping on his stomach, but he was breathing and since I hadn’t yet woken him, I didn’t want to mess with him by flipping him back over, etc., so I crept back to bed, and smiled the blissful smile of a parent whose child has just slept through the night for the first time in a long, long time.
Let me repeat that – he slept through the night! 7pm to 6:15am! Over 11 hours straight! When I got him dressed this morning I told him that he needs to repeat that performance every night from now until the day he moves out of our house. And since all little boys listen and follow their mommies exact instructions, I’m sure that will happen any day now 
I’m leaving for a conference on Sunday for work. This is the first conference I’ve been to since 2005 – well before Xander was born. Aside from 1 week when Xander was 6 months old, this is the longest I will have been away from my children, ever. And I have never left them home with their dad, not even for one overnight. It sounds bad when I write it that way, but it hasn’t been intentional – it just hasn’t worked out that I’ve needed to be away from home for long. I have complete faith that everything will be just fine at home while I’m gone. I know that it’s a lot of work to juggle our two boys, but Zach can handle it. Their clothes might not match when they leave for day care, and they might have a few crumbs still smeared on their faces, but they’ll be clean, and well fed and happy.
It’s hard for me to believe that Parker is 6 months old today. I can still remember him kicking around in my belly, still remember the excitement I felt the night before he was born, that morning that Zach and I got up before the sun and drove to the hospital. I remember how nervous I felt, how the epidural gave me the shakes, and then holding my breath while the doctors gave Parker his first APGAR score. I can remember holding him for the first time, and snuggling with that little baby burrito for hours and hours. I remember a million more moments after that, but those moments don’t seem so long ago.
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