a sweet little sleeper

On November 29, 2011, Isla slept through the night.*

She was five hundred and five days old. 

She was 72 weeks old.

She was sixteen months and seventeen days old.

Sixteen months and seventeen days is a really, really, reeaaaally long time to go without solid sleep.

A really long time.

In case you missed the point, it was truly a really long time.

We-the-parents were so tired.

We could not remember our days or nights.

Sometimes we couldn't remember how we got home or what we did the day before.

A lot of times we couldn't remember much more than our names.

So when November 29th came along, and Isla slept all night long, we were so thankful.

So fearful.

So thankful.

So. Tired.

It took a bit for us to adjust.  And then the fear set in, that we would do something to mess it up.  To mess up our sleep.  To mess up her sleep. (Though truth be told, she seemed fine without it - amazingly fine, energetic, happy, healthy.) 

And so for the first week, we couldn't really rest.

And then time went on, and she continued to sleep.

And we started to sleep.

And life was so different in so many ways.

...

Then, only a few, short, months ago, we began having difficulties in the sleep department again.  Isla would not go to sleep.  She screamed and screamed and cried herself into fits.  She bruised herself on the crib as she thrashed around, angry that we'd put her to bed.  She refused to settle with any sleep method we tried.  And so night after night, she ended up in the arms of one parent or the other - most often her Dadoo's - and there she would stay, and sleep.

This is when our fear returned.  

You have to imagine our worry.

It was Five. Hundred. Five. Days.  

Five. Hundred. Five. Nights.

We felt we couldn't do it again.

We might not make it.

For sure, we-the-parents would never recover.

And what of our poor kids?

And so the previously mentioned transfer to a 'big girl bed' began.

And it has been a.ma.zing.

Isla has been AMAZING.

She is such a little sleeper!  She had a moment of unhappiness before we realized she was trying to ask for the light on, but once we worked through that, she was fine.  She is fine.  She sleeps.  Hard.  

Each night, we tuck her in, close her door only halfway and turn on the hall light.  We kiss her and hug her and give her the 'memes' (babies) she needs and whisper how we love her and leave her in bed.  And each night, she goes to sleep.  

Sure, there are moments when she doesn't.  There are nights, as there are with every young child, when she awakens, afraid of something, and needs to be comforted.  But she always settles back down, into her own bed, onto her own pillow, under her own blankets, into her own two-year-old dreams.

We are so thankful.

We are so proud of her.

What a sweet little sleeper.

...

*From the time she was small, Isla averaged between 3 and 5 hours a night of solid sleep.  Usually, she slept from half-past midnight until sometime around 5 in the morning, waking for food in the middle..  In the midst of these long months, there were a few nights where she slept six hours without needing any food, diaper, or comfort from her parents.  But even on the 'good' nights, Isla was never in bed before eleven p.m., and she needed assistance at least once a night.  While most parents we know have had the 7 p.m to 6 a.m. stretch of all night sleeping since their babies were quite small, we have never achieved this.  All night for us, until last year, was roughly four hours of uninterrupted sleep.  

**How old was she?
She was 43,632,000 seconds old.
She was 727,200 minutes old.
She was 12,120 hours old.
Yeah. It was a LONG time.