SleepyHappyHealthy

So I can hardly believe it as I am writing this, but....Jamison slept through the night! That's right, folks, the WHOLE night. I woke up at six thirty to silence, and then, in a panic, realized I hadn't gone to him at all since going to bed. I flew out of bed and burst into his room to make sure he was still alive. Sure enough, he was snoozing ever so peacefully. I touched his face and his hands and scooched him over a bit in the crib and he stirred but didn't wake. Which left me with a problem...should I wake him up to feed him? Or let him continue to sleep? But since I've been told to never wake a sleeping baby, I went back to bed. I shook my husband awake and asked him if while I was sleeping he gave the baby a bottle or something. Nope, he said. "Did you hear him crying?" I asked. (He goes to sleep WAAAY later than me. He'd play world of warcraft all night if he could.) I had started to feel incredibly guilty if he had cried and I just totally slept through it. What kind of mother would that make me?

"A little," he said. But not enough for him to go upstairs to wake me up to get him. It didn't last long, and the tyke just went back to sleep.

So I went back to sleep, until seven thirty when I realized that it was becoming increasingly necessary for me to feed him. He ate hungrily, but never woke up all the way. So then I went back to bed again, and woke up and NINE THIRTY, not to crying, but to cooing coming from his crib as he had a nice conversation with his hands. A miracle, I tell you.

I attribute this wonderful event (hopefully not a fluke) to the best baby sleep book ever: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr. Weissbluth. It is amazing. I have scoured that book and it has made a huge difference in how we handled the night-waking. And voila! Sleeping through the night.

The other day I was discussing different tactics from the book we could use on Jamison with Keaton, and he listened then commented, "Is this how we get a sleepyhappyhealthybaby?" I stared at him a moment before i realized he was referring to the title of the book he'd seen around so often,but only had managed to glean the descriptive words from it and didn't remember the rest. I laughed so hard. It was cute that he was trying. So now, we always refer to Jamison as a sleepyhappyhealthy baby. Or healthysleepyhappy. Or....well, you get the idea.

Now, we have a happysleepyhealthy mommy too!