Rise and shine

There have been many times when I've been talking to a friend and she will yawn and say "I'm so tired, Little Billy woke up at 5:00 this morning." And I would sympathize and complain about the early mornings and tell her I felt her pain. But honestly? I have never felt that pain.

Don't get me wrong, the infant stage of Nathan's life was complete and total hell when it came to sleep. But once he finally figured out how to sleep through the night at 6 months, he has been a pretty solid 7:30 - 7:30 sleeper. In the past year I can count on my hand the number of times he has woken up before 7. And on the very, very rare occasion, there has been a 6:30.

But today, I felt that woman's pain. Today my son decided to wake up at 4:51. Let me repeat that, Nathan woke up today at 4:51. I didn't even have to open my eyes to know it was still dark when I first heard him. I decided to let him cry for a while, hoping he would settle himself down. But at 5:01, I was afraid the neighbors might come knocking so I went into his room. I kept the lights off and the door closed to he couldn't escape. I kept telling him "It's too early to get up Nathan, it's still night time." Nathan felt otherwise.

We agreed to disagree.

We have a small loveseat in Nathan's bedroom so I told him he could lie on the couch with me but that was it - no playing, no reading. He requested his cribmates - Pooh and Seahorse and I complied.  It took a few minutes of wriggling around but he finally seemed content to lie on me and settle down. Nathan was quite comfortable, completely spread eagle across the top of my body. I on the other hand was trying to lie on a couch that's about 4 feet wide which is hard enough but when you add a sleeping 27 pounds on top of you so you can't really move around and adjust yourself - it's next to impossible to get comfortable.

By 5:30 he was sound asleep. It was time to plan my escape.  I didn't dare put him back in the crib - it was too risky that he would wake up during the transfer. So instead, I slowly inched my body out from beneath him until he was on the couch and I was on the floor. I grabbed one of the couch pillows and a blanket and settled in onto the carpet. Normally, this would not be ideal, but at 5:30, it felt like heaven.

Next thing I knew, I was waking to the sound of someone laughing, repeating "Mommy on floor" over and over. I looked at the clock and it was 7:05, not too shabby. It wasn't the best night of sleep, but compared to those newborn nights, it wasn't the worst one either.

Back in the day, when 4:51 wakeup calls and babies sleeping on top of  me were the norm.