Carter slept through the night last night, for the first time.
For those of you without children, don’t get too excited. We didn’t return to the old days of seven or eight hours solid sleep. The medical definition of sleeping through the night is sleeping for five hours straight.
Last night, Carter didn’t want to fall asleep. He drifted off, and I covered him with his blanket, only to watch his right foot kick straight up, followed by his left hand and then a wide-eyed grunt. Repeatedly, I helped him drift off only to witness the blanket-kick-dance. I rested my head on the edge of his basket to close my eyes for a few winks in between grunts. I don’t remember him actually falling asleep, but the last time I looked at the clock was 11:48 pm.
At 5:15 am, I awakened, amazed at the unusual rested feeling I had. I looked over at Carter, who was struggling to wake up, wiggling his eyebrows and stretching.
For five weeks, I have waited for this night. On a few nights, I have worried about falling asleep in the rocking chair and dropping a wide awake Carter, giving new meaning to “down will come baby, cradle and all.” I have begged Carter to sleep, “just fifteen minutes longer,” wishing in vain for some kind of baby snooze button.
Since Carter’s birth, the most common topic of conversation for me has been responding to the question, “are you getting any sleep?” I explain that Kevin and I have developed a system, (See Pappa Journal, Issue #4) that affords me enough sleep to get by. I describe the great movies you can catch between the hours of 2 and 4 am. I yawn.
These conversations are followed by assurances that this sleepless period does not last forever, and that soon Carter will start sleeping for longer stretches and I’ll be able to get enough sleep to feel human again.
After hearing these discussions, one might believe that my first thoughts this morning would be those of relief. Not so. Despite the almost constant feeling of exhaustion, the first thought I had this morning upon reading the clock was not, “Thank God,” or “boy, my baby is quite sophisticated, sleeping for that long at a stretch.” Instead it was, “oh no, my baby has grown up!”
The point is, the sleepless phase won’t last forever. Carter won’t be a baby forever. Soon he’ll be going to college (See Pappa Journal for March 5, 2000). It won’t be long until Carter waking me up at 2:30 am will have more to do with missing curfew than with missing Momma.
Eventually, there will be no more “sleep smiles,” the brief, toothless grins Carter affords me after a good meal just before he drifts into dreamland. His smiles will become longer lasting and more deliberate. No longer will his frustrated grunts of hunger awaken me. Instead, we will discuss the merits of actually eating the lentil and brussel sprout stew over which Momma slaved all afternoon. The special times when Carter and I are the only people awake will become farther and farther apart.
While I’m certain there are a lot more late night feedings awaiting Carter and me, this morning was an indicator of things to come. I glimpsed the future, and perhaps experienced my first separation anxiety. These frequent conversations about sleep, or the lack thereof, haven’t captured the almost constant feeling of elation I get from looking at my son. They haven’t revealed my desire to not miss a second of Carter’s development, my wish to stretch each second out as long as possible.
I’m pretty well rested today, for the first time in several weeks, and it feels good. But tonight, if Carter wakes up at 2:30 am and wants a little quality time with Momma, I won’t be hitting snooze.