With Mimi a bit sick, Sumie a bit exhausted, and the weather a bit dreary, it was a Saturday best spent inside. We think Mimi's having a reaction to her vaccination shots from a week or so back, which has resulted in a fever and two very restless nights. Mimi's putting up the good fight, though, and doing her best to get through the night. Quite a change from the reality of a few months back...
On Mimi's first night with us, when we were all still in the hospital, she was only able to sleep in 15 minute bursts. She was hungry, Sumie wasn't producing milk yet, and I was dead to the world having been up for 30 hours straight. Supplied with a supplemental feeding system the next morning, Mimi, Mama, and Papa all settled in together the following night and, amazingly, slept through the entire night. It was the first full night's sleep together as a family and the last to be enjoyed for a long, long time.
A loving but stubborn little girl, Mimi has been blessed with lungs that challenge the explanatory powers of modern physics. She likes to use them when she wants something. And for 10 months, she wanted something every night between midnight and 3:00am.
As a result, and given the living constraints of a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, Mimi would co-sleep with us. Each night we'd go through the same routine - give her the bottle in the cradle, put on the white noise, rock her until she'd nodded off, and tuck her into the crib - hoping that this night would be different; this night would be the one she'd sleep through. Invariably she'd wake, and then wake us. Some nights were worse than others. There were mornings when Sumie and I awoke to find that Mimi was in bed with us, neither of us having any clue of how it happened. And there were nights when Mimi wanted to "play" from 2 to 4am, despite her parents' pleas.
We expected Mimi to wake up each night for the first few months; it wasn't really an issue. At 6 months, we figured she was just a little late in getting to sleep through the night. At 8 months, we were starting to break. We'd both go to work and hear tales of infants sleeping through the night at 2 months, or be given advice that, when applied, made no difference whatsoever. We were a little disheartened but, more than that, we were exceedingly fatigued. My brain simply could not manage information in the same manner. I was, in no uncertain terms, significantly dumber. I still find it rather ironic that men and women throughout the world willingly allow their children to inflict upon them a form of torture that has been internationally outlawed.
Finally, when Mimi was around 10 months old, the penny dropped. Around 1am, in the midst of Mimi's nightly wails, I decided that there would be no more co-sleeping with Mimi - ever. Now, this was easier said than done. We had tried to let Mimi "cry it out" on several occasions, with some degree of success (this is how we got her to sleep in the crib instead of her cradle), but she's too clever and stubborn to succumb to such a basic strategy as that. Even if she was asleep, Mimi knew if we were in the room. I don't know how, but she did. It was rather like a bad horror film. Sumie and I were the young lovers attempting to escape, but no matter how well we hid, no matter how quiet we kept, we'd be hunted down and torn to bits (well, torn to bits vocally).
Our solution: sleep in the living room. We broke out the airbed, brought out the comforter, sheets, and pillows, put Mimi back the crib, and camped out in front of the couch. Mimi was not pleased with this turn of events, but after about half an hour her cries subsided. The next night we did the same thing, only this time sleeping in the living room from the very beginning. Mimi again woke up, but got herself back to sleep in about 15 minutes. The next night amazingly, mercifully, she slept the entire night through. We were so proud of our little girl!
Despite the success, we didn't return to the bedroom right away. We were gun shy. What if she spotted us? What if she saw through our little scheme and knew we couldn't sleep in the living room indefinitely (actually, given how tired we were, we perhaps could have). It took us about a week of camping in the living room, and Mimi sleeping through the night, for us to work up the courage to enter our own bedroom again. Thankfully, Mimi's become a competent sleeper and now can even suffer through her father's horrific snoring!
Here's a picture of Mimi and me in the same living room that offered such solace during those dark days. We're both glad to be sleeping well, at last!
-Steve
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