If you are mom, you know the infamous question: is your baby sleeping through the night yet? It is like a rite of passage. Your baby does not achieve "good baby" status until he sleeps from evening until morning without waking. My first four babies slept in my bed and didn't begin to sleep through until around eighteen months old. Alaine was our first baby who preferred her own bed and began sleeping all night well before she turned a year old. Having the baby sleep for eleven straight hours equals a full night of rest for Dad and Mom, right?!
It's a myth, I tell ya!
Last night I put Alaine to bed at 7:30. Benjamin and Owen followed a little after 8. At 8:45, a large boy-shaped shadow appears on the wall, but when I call out a name, the shadow disappears and a bed spring creaks. At 9:15, a voice whispers my name and I go into the boys' bedroom to lay down the law. Brian and I go to bed several hours later (we are night owls!), but sometime in the night, Owen arrives at my bedside and crawls in beside me. He's cold so I bundle the covers around him. After having him toss and turn for too long beside me, he kicks up his legs and says, "I'm hot with all these blankets!" I whisper to him that it is time to go back to his own bed. "Okay," he says, "but I need a drink and some music first." I peek at the clock and, though it is still dark, realize that it is close to morning and too much commotion will wake Alaine so I send him back to bed without his requests.
It's a myth, I tell ya!
Last night I put Alaine to bed at 7:30. Benjamin and Owen followed a little after 8. At 8:45, a large boy-shaped shadow appears on the wall, but when I call out a name, the shadow disappears and a bed spring creaks. At 9:15, a voice whispers my name and I go into the boys' bedroom to lay down the law. Brian and I go to bed several hours later (we are night owls!), but sometime in the night, Owen arrives at my bedside and crawls in beside me. He's cold so I bundle the covers around him. After having him toss and turn for too long beside me, he kicks up his legs and says, "I'm hot with all these blankets!" I whisper to him that it is time to go back to his own bed. "Okay," he says, "but I need a drink and some music first." I peek at the clock and, though it is still dark, realize that it is close to morning and too much commotion will wake Alaine so I send him back to bed without his requests.
As I drift off to sleep, Owen returns and says, "I just have one question." I ignore him, hoping he'll go away. He repeats, "I just have one question...where is Ben?"
"Is he not in your bed?" I ask. When he answers no, I stumble out of my bed and walk across the house to the boys' bedroom when I discover that not only is Ben not in bed, he is not in the room! I'm slightly startled by this discovery, but having forgotten to grab my glasses from the bedside table, I'm feeling a considerable handicap. (Without my glasses, my vision is 20/400.) By this time, Gavin is whispering from his top bunk, wondering why we are up. I ask one of the boys to find me a flashlight so I have light to aid my blindness. Owen finds one under the Christmas tree and I begin my search. I look in the closet and under the bed. I look in Maddie's room. I look in the living room and on the sofa. I look in the dining room, growing more frantic all the time.
Finally, I shine the light into my bedroom and walk around the bed to Brian's side. There lies Ben asleep on the floor. I turn off the flashlight, tell the older boys that their little brother is safe and well, then I flop back in bed for an hour...before Alaine wakes for the day.
Sleep through the night?! It's a myth, I tell ya!
