Thumbs Up

Reid made a very exciting discovery few weeks ago - his thumb!

He's actually stumbled upon it a few times over the past couple of months, but now he seems to have learned exactly where to find it and that it will always be there for him at all times. And he is now officially a thumbsucker. Which I don't think in itself is necessarily a good or bad thing (at least at this age - we'll talk in a few years), but the thing is that he is able to soothe himself by sucking his thumb. Which means that he doesn't need Mommy's (or Daddy's) help to soothe him back to sleep every time he wakes up in the middle of the night. And this, combined with his mastery of rolling which allows him to position himself however he likes, means that the boy is sleeping much, much better - sometimes all the way from bedtime 'til morning! Hallelujah!

The first night he did this was December 8th, 2008 - a date for the baby book! He slept from 7:30 pm 'til 8 in the morning - 12 1/2 hours! Now of course just because he slept all night doesn't mean I did. I woke up in the middle of the night and waited a while for him to wake up... and when he didn't, I checked on him to make sure he was still breathing. At first I thought he wasn't, but turns out he was. Whew! Here he is the morning after (note freshly removed "thumbs up"):

He hasn't slept this well every night since, but a few of them he has and that, my friends, is what I call progress. His record is 14 1/2 hours. That's not a typo - 14 1/2 hours in a row. That's more than he had previously slept in a 24-hour period. And then he took a 2-hour morning nap. So then I started to worry that he might be a narcoleptic. But I'm not complaining!

As luck would have it, I wasn't feeling well that record-breaking night, so I took an antihistamine. A 12-hour release antihistamine. I had forgotten that antihistamines jack with my sleep. So I woke up about 3 hours into my slumber. And I was up. All night long. Awake, as my formerly sleep-challenged baby slept... well, like a baby. One of these days we'll both get it right on the same night.

In the meantime, even if I don't sleep well I still reap the benefits of his sleep, as he's in a much better mood when he's had a good night's sleep. I love walking in to this well-rested face in the mornings

So while I don't anticipate that every night will be a 14-hour marathon (I actually doubt that will ever happen again), I have high hopes for many more nights of good sleep - for Reid and, eventually, for me. We'll keep you posted!