"i slept like a baby"

Who coined that phrase, "sleeping like a baby"? Because whoever did obviously never actually had a baby. 

Now, first let me say that Derek and I have been very blessed when it comes to having a sleeping baby. Vera has been wonderful. She had the normal waking up to eat in the middle of the night when she was first born but we never spent hours up with her during the middle of the night. It's kind of like she knew that nothing else was happening and therefore would go right back to sleep after eating. Yes, we knew then that we were blessed. And then around 6 weeks she just started sleeping for about 6 or 7 hours. It was fabulous. I never thought that I would thrive so much on 6 hours of sleep, but it was a game changer. Her 6 and 7 hour nights just kept get longer and soon she was sleeping from about 10:00 until 6:00 or 7:00. Yes, we know how lucky we are. 

I know that some people may be reading this and be thinking, "If she even tries to write about her baby not sleeping..." No, that's not what this is about. At least I don't think so. 

As all babies do, when Vera has had a few growth spurts she has had some more difficult nights of sleep. She will go down fine but then will be up at 1 or 2 and then again at 4 or so. Well last night she was up twice between 1 and 2 -- not because she was hungry, she just woke up. How am I sure that she wasn't hungry? Because I completely slept through the whole thing and Derek got up to give her the pacifier. Good grief, I felt like a terrible mom when I learned that one this morning. And then at 5:30 this morning Vera let out a cry that propelled me from bed. I went in, put her pacifier back in, turned on her lullaby cd and waited a minute or two. She seemed pretty good so I went back to our room. Of course, no sooner had I gotten into bed that she cried again. Back I went. This time worked better. But of course now it's about 5:45 and I can't sleep anymore. And that's when the phrase, "sleeping like a baby" came to mind. 

When I think of "great sleepers" a baby really isn't the first one to come to mind. 

Junior highers -- there are some good sleepers for you. I used to spend the first five minutes of class on Mondays doing weekend updates with my kids. They got a chance to share about their weekends with the class. I loved it because I could learn more about my students and it helped the kids ease back into school after a weekend and they loved it because let's be honest, who doesn't love sharing about their weekend? Anyway, these kids would share about their weekends and I was always amazed at the amount of sleep they could fit into 48 hours. 

High schoolers -- also very adept in the sleeping category. When I taught high school I had some students who could fall asleep in class on a regular basis. Now, before you think that my teaching was boring, let me say that as I shared about these "nappers" with other teachers I found that they did this in nearly every class. Once I got over my shock that they could fall asleep in class (I can say that I never fell asleep in class, even in college, it just seemed like the rudest thing you could ever do), I just let them do it -- but if they came up to ask me about something that I had explained while they were sleeping, I told them they had to ask a classmate. I wasn't going to reteach something to someone who wanted to nap during my class. 

College students. Need I say more? I remember sleeping forever some Saturdays in college. In fact, my sister, Addie, who is 22, just informed me that she slept until 2 pm on Saturday. And for no good reason either. Vera has never slept that long. 

And so, if you had a really good night of sleep -- You went to bed and fell right asleep. You didn't move positions once. You don't remember one dream you had. You slept well past your normal wake up time. Once you woke up, you took a little extra time to just lay there silently before getting out of bed. I would argue to say you slept like a college student, not a baby.