What's this? What's this? There's something in the air!

1) Normally I don't quote musicals while blogging but that one line was all that floated through my brain this morning.

2) Verizon FIOS has a nasty habit of resetting their boxes whenever a power surge or anything even flickers.

3) Max hit 12 weeks today.

Now, what do these three things have in common? Max almost slept through the night last night. That's what they have in common.

As all new parents know, no baby sleeps through the night right away. People who claim their child magically does are, pardon my language, fucking liars. To. A. One. Doesn't matter if your baby has colic or not. It ain't sleeping through the night for the first month, maybe not even the second. It may sleep through long stretches, but by and large those stretches are going to range between one to three hours.

Max hit almost a full 11 hours last night. I say "almost" because he was up three times but it wasn't so bad. New parents look for the good in literally anything because they want their child to mature (not grow up mind you) enough so that all of you can sleep through the night again.

Here is Max's normal nighttime routine we've established:

6:30 - 6:45 p.m. = Bath time. We strip him down, put him in the bath, and wash him every other day so as to not dry out his skin. Other days we just let him splash around. As a result, he's really taken to enjoying being in water which is a far cry from his mother.

7:00 - 7:30 p.m. = Feeding. This is his "final" feeding before bed time. Then we change him, and wrap him in the Miracle Blanket. One of us then walks him while burping him and works to put him to sleep. We lay him down in his crib, turn on the sound machine (set to White Noise) and close the bedroom door. He then sleeps normally until about 10 p.m.-ish when he'll wake up hungry. From that point on we feed him, change him, put him right back down. This last part involves rocking some nights, no rocking other nights.

Last night here's how it went.

6:45 - 7:00 p.m. = bath time
7:00 - 7:30 p.m. = feeding time
7:30 - 8:30 p.m. = me walking while holding him trying to get him to go to sleep while my dinner grew colder by the second

For whatever reason he did not want to go to sleep. He wasn't fussy at all though. He just calmly looked at me while I held him, yawned every now and then, but otherwise was wide awake. Then I put him in The Crook* of my arm and it was like a light switched off. Out he went and out he stayed.

I'll explain The Crook* in a separate post.

I put him down and went on about my night. He woke back up about 10:30 p.m. which was fine. My Fair Lady fed him, then I took over changing him and rocking him. The catch was he was so far asleep and completely limp that there was no need to excessively rock him. So I laid him down and he went back to sleep. Since I was still awake and needed something to put me to sleep, I went and played "Assassin's Creed."

Zing!

Max woke up again at 2 a.m. for his nightly feeding. I told My Fair Lady that I would change him and put him down after the feeding and to come wake me up after she was done. She agreed and I went back to sleep. Fast forward to this morning.

I hear Max crying via the baby monitor and immediately snap half out of my stupor. I look at the time on the Verizon box and it says 141. "Dammit!" I shouted, loud enough apparently to awaken My Fair Lady. "Wait a sec. Weren't you supposed to wake me when you were done feeding him?" I asked.

"Yeah, he went right down though so I just did it myself," she replied. "What time is it?"

"I have no idea." Max cried out again. "What the hell is the time?!?!"

"Oh my God," came the response from the other side of the bed. "It's 7 a.m."

We just looked at each other stunned. We got out of bed and I fetched Max while she up the feeding station. I brought him out and he immediately latched onto her. Meanwhile she and I just stared at each other and at him in complete shock. He'd actually slept and woken up at clockwork intervals, specifically ones we could handle. We needed to get up at 7 a.m. anyway and we went to sleep around 10 p.m. anyway. One time in the middle of the night is no big deal. Not a bad way to start off his 12th week.

"What's this? What's this? There's something in the air!" blared through my head at full volume.

Here's hoping there is more joy to come. Oh, and he's an incredibly happy baby right now and his parents both feel more alive than they have since November. Amazing what a decent night's sleep can do for you.