Praise God from whom all blessings flow...

Praise Him all creatures here below:

Lincoln SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT LAST NIGHT!

As in, 8:20 pm-7:20 am. 11 hours!!

Why? How? Only God knows.

You see, last week, Linc had a couple of really good nights, once sleeping from 9-ish pm to 7:30, with only one reswaddling around 3 am, during which he didn't really wake up. I also dream fed him around 10:30. So we counted that as sleeping through the night, even though it involved some work during the night. And he'd had a couple of pretty good nights the week before.

But in between good nights, we had some of the most hellish nights since the end of February, when he was a month old: he was up every 45 minutes to 2 hours, all night long!! Why? Not a clue. He didn't need to eat, didn't need anything. He just started screaming. This was after he was acclimated to his new, 4-hour schedule and dream feed, and he was taking pretty good naps during the day and eating well, too. We could not figure out why he was regressing! And we were not happy.

Last night, he made up for everything. 11 hours, without ANY work on our part in the middle of the night! Here's what happened.

Linc usually takes an evening nap between 4:30 & 5 for an hour or a little more. Last night, I went out with some girlfriends around 5:15 pm. Linc had gone down for a nap around 4:45. George said that Linc woke up about 5 minutes after I left, and he never got him to go back to sleep. He finally let him just stay up and fed him around 7, the usual time.

Linc's bedtime is supposed to be between 7:30 and 8. Well, I got home a bit after 7, and he wasn't even acting tired, in spite of his really short nap. I finally put him down around 8:30 or so when he was yawning. He didn't go right to sleep, and got a bit fussy 10 minutes later, so I went in, stuck the paci back in his mouth and sshhd him for a minute or two--and he was out.

I had been considering ending the dream feed this week (figured he can make it an extra 3 hours without eating), but thought I'd give him a few more days to get used to being swaddled with 1 arm out, and then end the dream feed next week. Well, when I went in to dream feed him at 10:30, he was sleeping SO peacefully, and had not been up at all since I stuck the paci back in his mouth. And I just had this feeling not to mess with him: something was telling me to leave him alone and see what happened. (could only be God!!)

So I pumped instead and went right to bed, which was wonderful. 10:30 is early for me!

I woke up around 2:30 am because the toilet was making odd noises (I should have been a plumber) and checked on Lincoln: he was still out like a light.

I woke up again when my alarm went off at 7--and I had not heard Lincoln make a peep all night long! Naturally, I freaked out, imagining all sorts of horrible things, usually ending in suffocation (he got loose from the swaddle and suffocated! He rolled on his tummy and suffocated! He just...stopped breathing! and/or suffocated!) and ran to check on him. And had to laugh: he was on his belly, perpendicular in the crib. The perpendicular thing is quite normal (I swear this child is a born gymnast), but the belly thing is new.

And he was still breathing! He hadn't suffocated!

He usually eats at 7, but since he'd slept 11 HOURS, I thought I'd wait and see what happened, so went back to bed. He woke up around 7:20 and was perfectly fine. In fact, he ate on both sides for his 7:30 feeding, which he never does, so he was more than fine. Must have been skipping the dream feed that did it.

SO. It's too late to make a long story short, but we are hopeful that last night was the start of a new, wonderful and restful chapter in Linc's--and our--life. I'm not quite naive enough to think that he will sleep through the night, every night, for the rest of his life, but I'm cautiously hopeful that good nights will now outnumber bad ones.

Or maybe it was just a fluke, and we'll be back to 2-hour snippets of sleep. God forbid!

But it's 10:33 pm, and he hasn't made a peep since I put him down at 8:30 (again, with a very short evening nap). Maybe I'll get some lengthy, uninterrupted sleep tonight for the first time since the second trimester, when I had to start getting up 2-3 times a night to pee.

In order to find out, I actually have to go to bed. Good night!