You know why? Because every time something happens for the first time, it brings hope for more sleep, less carrying and more interaction which all means more freedom for parent and baby. However, it's not the "first" time it happens that we reap these benefits. It's two days, two weeks or two months later when she has finally mastered whatever IT is.
For example...since I have been so diligent at documenting our "first" parenting experience you can look back to the August 17 blog where I claim, "Our kid is so advanced". I will humbly admit right here that we have not seen her try to roll from her back to her front since then. I think it was a fluke.
Another example?...Well, Tuesday night, after sleeping a lot in the evening and both Rodney and I preparing ourselves for less than 5 hours of sleep, Lucy slept from 9:30pm-5:15am. Now, I awoke at 5am thinking it was the 2am feeding and didn't hear her. I groggily looked at the clock to see it was 5am. I was immediately elated and enthusiastic! This was QUICKLY followed by these three thoughts:
1. Is she still breathing?
2. Is she sick and the only signs that she is sick is that she is sleeping a lot? (It wasn't until later that I thought, "Who cares if she has the "sleeping sickness"! That could work for us.)
And #3. What am I going to do if she's not breathing?
Ok, so if you are not a parent, this may seem pretty crazy. If you are a parent, I am looking to you for validation that these morbid thoughts do cross your mind from time to time. Of course, since I had gone to this horrible place in my head I was definitely AWAKE! I ran to check on her and her Dad's 'Super Swaddle' was so snug I had a hard time determining her resting breathing. Of course she was breathing and quite peacefully. It was because she had this amazing swaddle. We have discovered that she is what we call a "houdini baby". She can wiggle her arms out of a swaddle in no time and have her self awake. But when we get it just right...she'll sleep for hours. So this night Dad got it right. She looked like the perfect baby burrito.
But it doesn't stop there... She finally wakes up at 5:15 and I praise her up and down for sleeping so well and rush to get the bottle I had prepared in my 'morbid thought place' knowing that she would be famished from the many hours without nourishment. She ate at a fairly good pace and filled her tummy once again. This lead to her passing out on my shoulder during a burping session. I mistook this for her more common 10 minute "sneak-a-nap" that often happens at the end of a good bottle. She doesn't really stay asleep so I stayed awake. She kept sleeping....and sleeping...and sleeping. At this point it was now 7:00am and Rodney was up. Why did I not go back to bed? Why was I up before the sun staring at my child? This isn't the first 2 weeks of complete amazement of her. This is the 7th week where I know I can look at her just fine during the normal awake hours.
But I couldn't go back to sleep. I was still recovering from those thoughts. Well, she continued to sleep a lot that day and last night we DID NOT get the swaddling right. She was up several times with her hands rubbing her face and crying. Each time I shoved her hands back in the swaddle and pulled it tight across her chest and under her, she passed out again. Now she is in Dad's 'Super Swaddle' again and has been sleeping peacefully for two hours, DURING THE DAYLIGHT HOURS!!! I think I need to take some lessons!!!!
Needless to say...I'm not getting excited about this "first" until I start feeling a bit restful after several nights of solid sleep.
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