Worra, Worra, Worra

That's "Texan" for "worry worry worry." That's what I do best. Here's the confession. Lucy slept thru the night last night....or did she? I'll back up: Lucy has never truly slept thru the night. She's slept 6 or 7 hours straight, which for the medical books is great, but they were never normal times (11p-6a, 9p-3a, etc). We've worked on "cry it out", and we've made leaps and bounds and she can put herself to sleep most of the time, which does include a little crying sometimes. But getting back to sleep is a harder issue. Anyway, the last 2 nights she slept from 10p-7:45 with only one wake up each night, which is really great!! So it could be that last night's 9p-7:30a straight was a graduation step. OR.....??

We had our small group over last night, so when I put her to bed, I closed the door completely, and turned her music on to drown out our voices and laughter. By the time Tim and I headed to bed, it was colder than normal, so he did not open her door, as he usually does. We didn't fall asleep till almost midnight, and we both had reasons to be in deeper comas than usual (I had lots of tears in our conversation, Tim had his usual antihistamines.) So when I woke at 4:30, I was surprised. Even worried! I started thinking about dangerous possibilities, the top of my list being the fact that she had 2 or 3 small bites of my cookie before bed...her first exposure to peanuts. What if she had a delayed anaphylactic allergic reaction to peanuts and died in her sleep? (????). I managed to detect via video moniter that she was still breathing. Fine, I won't go in there (i've actually woken her up many times doing this "mommy dearest" behavior). So I tossed and turned the next 3 hours, believing she would probably wake up any second.

At 7:30 when Tim woke up, he started putting every doubt in my mind....the door was closed, we probably just didn't hear her cry. That did it, i opened the door, laid my hand on her back, she stirred, and of course woke up. Well, at least it was a decent hour to get up. In that split second, I worried that there wasn't enough air with the door closed. Why had we never bought a fan for her room (the new suggestion for reducing SIDS)? How could I have not heard her? What if she "needed me" and she cried for a long time? All unlikely, since we've had BOTH doors shut and can still hear her crying when she gets going, and she wasn't smeared with snot all over her face (likely if she had been crying for hours). Long after she was awake, happy, NOT brain damaged from too much CO2, i was still sad thinking she might have thought I ignored her. My critics will say it is a good thing that she slept thru the night, even if she put herself back to sleep. I know this in my head, and writing this blog I am able to PUT IT TO REST! In my own defense, I HAD also read an article about the tragedy of babies dying in cars because for various reasons had been forgotten in the backseat. So as I was telling Tim these stories right before bed, I was already all upset about what if that ever happened to us....or if Lucy died in ANY way, and all we had left were her photos and videos?? Nightmare. Yes, that's most likely why I visited insanity-land!

In summary, this is exactly the kind of thinking that Tim claims does NOT bode well for having multiple children!!! People with multiple children HAVE to let this way of thinking go! Ha, a funny story: hanging out with my friend Kimarie (4 kids), and her nearly 2 year old was climbing high on the park play set. I was soooo worried that he would fall off, and I asked her why she let him do that. In brief, her response was that all you really need to worry about was him breaking his neck. Everything else was manageable (split lip, broken bones, etc). I'm like, "you're out here on a farm, with all 4 kids by yourself....wouldn't the sheer inconvenience of taking him to the emergency room be a detterent??" She just laughed at me, while I shook my head in worried disgust!!! I still am inspired by you Kimmy!

So I really am happy she slept thru the night after all!!