A Good Night’s Sleep

Last night, out of nowhere, my daughter (I think, to the best of my knowledge, as far as I can recall, drum roll please) slept through the night.
Yes, at nearly 15 months of age, she provided me with the longest uninterrupted stretch of sleep I’ve had since her birth. Excluding the first night after she was born when she slept 7 hours (! – related I’m sure to my milk supply somehow).

The details: After a couple of naps during the day, and massive amounts of food in the evening, she was asleep by 9:15. I went to bed around 11. She didn’t wake up when I got into bed, which is unusual. I recall her stirring in the night, and I remember shushing her and maybe some gentle jiggling. I do not recall nursing her. Eventually she woke up and I could tell by the stretching that it was the real deal. She nursed and boy, I had a lot of milk! By the time she rolled over and went back to sleep I checked the time and it was ten to six. I estimate she slept from 9;15 to 5:30. UNPRECEDENTED!

I felt sooo much more awake this morning than I usually do! Simply delightful.

The timing on this is interesting to me because just recently I have started to find the nighttime wake-ups intrusive and exhausting. I have started to think about the fact that since she was born I’ve rarely slept more than 3 or maybe 4 hours at a stretch, and often 1 or 2. Frankly, I was starting to get tired (ha ha) of it. And as the Sears’ say, when you resent something in parenting, change it. We had already made some changes with working on an earlier bedtime, and I was doing more shushing and less breast/milk offering right when she woke up. She’d still get milk within a minute or two 🙂 but I tried other things first. All this to say, when my conscious brain started to register the need for a shift, my daughter responded.

I don’t necessarily expect this to continue. And sleep is always a back and forth and up and down proposition. I do think that it marks her ongoing growth and steady maturation, and that she will over time sleep through the night more and more.

For now, though, I’m just celebrating that this transition has begun. And I’m grateful that we’ve continued to stick to our commitment to respond to her needs and let her know that we’re right there to take care of her.

In other news, after way too much blog reading last week, I had a lot of purging energy today. Got rid of 3 – 4 bags of stuff, including a yarn collection (No crocheting in my immediate future and I’d like other yarn/colours), 3 books (massive # for me, booklover that I am!), 4 – 5 DVDs, some baby clothes, some personal clothes, our first set of glass bottles, a pair of boots, an old towel.

Incoming: a pair of boots (exchange on the ones I got last week as those were too tight on my toes). And the clothes yesterday 🙂 – but I got rid of some today to make up for it.

I’m excited to get more out over the weekend and enjoy the luxury of more space.