Juergensen Family Blog

Sleep is a wonderful thing. Last night was a great night for Zoe, which means it was a great night for Mom. Zoe went from a 9:30 pm feeding to 5:30 am, which is 8 hours! She slept from midnight to 5:30, which is a new record and starts to qualify as good sleep. Naturally being analytical, I scoured my records searching for the magic combination of events in the day (awake time, nap time, bath time) that led to the great sleep, but found it looked much like other days. All I can do is hope for is a repeat performance in the not-too-distant future.

Sleep is also a wonderful gift. For Christmas, both Zoe and John gave me the gift of sleep. Zoe slept from 2pm – 6pm, letting me eat an entire dinner in one sitting with enough time left over to finish opening gifts. John took the full night duty, giving me my first semi-uninterrupted night of sleep since she was born. It was the best gift ever.

Sleep (or the desire to achieve it) can lead us to do interesting things. A colleauge with a newborn puts their crying baby in the car seat and drives around until they are quieted. They call this the “nuclear option.” Fortunately my nuclear option is Celtic music, which mostly consists of bagpipes and violins in tunes resembling a jig. It is the only music I’ve found that can take her from a state of screaming to sleeping in a matter of minutes. Sometimes it works fast (as soon as the bagpipes come on) and other times it takes a few songs and some dancing on my part, but it has never let me down yet. John doesn’t think it’s quite as reliable as I claim and uses a variety of music, but I think he’s just not doing the jig right. Who would have ever thought a few songs could be my new best friend?

Yesterday morning I thought I saw a sustained smile from Zoe when looking up at me. From a developmental perspective it probably didn’t happen, but it doesn’t matter to me, because I needed it and in my mind I saw it. A friend had told me that the payoff for the grueling first month comes nine months later, when your child looks at you with incredibly loving eyes. Deciding that timeline was a little too long, I took matters into my own hands and saw her smile at me yesterday.

On a night prior to that, John thanked me during a 3am feeding. It wasn’t a particularly difficult night as nights go, but I clung to that thank you as if it would be the last I ever received. It’s funny how the simple five minute act of bringing someone coffee always elicits a thank you, but 6-8 hours of breast feeding a day, and 8 hours of night duty don’t seem to with the same regularity. When I need it on the bad nights, I take out the mental tape recorder and play it back.

So in my current world, my baby smiles at me and my husband says thank you, and that’s all I need to get by.