IT Happened!

At LONG last (4 months and 8 days to be exact...but who's counting?) Tucker slept all night long! No, my child is not a sleep prodigy who slept through the night at 6 weeks old. But he is brilliant in every other way. :)

Tucker has been so difficult with everything having to do with sleep since about 2 weeks old. First, his days and nights were confused and we spent many nights awake from 1-4 am and then either Lee or I would end up sleeping on the couch holding Tucker. Then, we had the hardest time getting him to stay asleep for more than 3o minutes before midnight. Tucker stopped eating during the night about a month ago, so since then I've been up multiple times a night replacing that stinking pacifier. So I was never getting more than 2 or maybe 3 hours of sleep at a night (and some nights much less). There is absolutely no way to communicate how frustrating and exhausting Tucker's sleep "issues" have been. I tend to be extremely patient, but even I was losing it.

So I decided to make myself put Tucker down "drowsy but awake." I never had the nerve to do this because he fought sleep so hard at first, and then he was just so wiggly. He would squirm and grunt and just wake himself up further and I was too exhausted and wanted him to be asleep ASAP. Tucker's new ability to roll over made things even more interesting. The sleep book I've been (sort of) following stresses repeatedly the importance of putting a baby to bed drowsy but awake so that he learns to fall asleep on his own. This supposedly helps him go back to sleep on his own when he wakes in the middle of the night. So I had an epiphany last week. When the book said that you must put your baby down drowsy but awake if you want his sleep habits to improve what it meant was that you must pull yourself together and put your baby down drowsy but awake. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. Why didn't you say so sooner?! When I followed this rule, Tucker slept much better. But, again, I CANNOT put into words how difficult this was. I'm talking tears. MY tears. Tucker is completely clueless about how irritating the whole thing was.

So last night, after an hour of waiting for Tucker to settle and intervening every few minutes to pat and shush, I crashed. When I woke up I had the strange and unfamiliar sense of having slept a long time. I gasped. Could it be? I looked at my phone to check the time. 6:10 am. Really?! I have gone to bed holding my breath with my fingers crossed every night for 4 months, and it has finally happened! After my little celebration, I did the next logical thing...I practically ran to Tucker's room to make sure he was still breathing. He was sleeping like an angel! So then I crept back to bed and was so excited that I couldn't fall back asleep.

It has been A YEAR since I have slept all night long with no interruptions. A YEAR. First there was the puking. Then when that was under control, there was the peeing. And then there was the feeding/patting/shh-ing/changing diapers/walking/bouncing/pacifier replacing with Tucker.

I needed a good night's sleep more than anything in the entire world. I'm trying not to count my chickens before they hatch, if you will, but I am grateful for last night and am looking forward to the possibility of many more nights of sleep. Ahhhhh. Sleep. There's nothing better!