Sleep is not overrated

It's been a long, sleepless couple of weeks. It started a few weeks ago when R. went to India for a week. Two days in, MZ started waking in the night, full of tears. I knew by the way she looked at me every morning with that, "what, you again?" look that all was not well in her world, and brought her into bed with me. She bounced back just in time for Daddy's return, at which point she stayed up all night patting him, handing him her lion, and generally letting him know how happy she was to have him home.

Things got better after a few nights, and then we went to Florida for Grandma Lil's 90th birthday. To say it was a difficult weekend is unsufficient to describe the sleeplessness we all endured, and the discomfort that obviously consumed her and the resultant worry that consumed us. On the flight home, when she had a fever and refused food for the third meal in a row and blew out her diaper 40 minutes into the flight with a thick, soggy biohazard of a poop, I felt like I had in those first weeks: They let me take her home with me? What are they, crazy? I had no idea what was going on with her and we wanted only to get her home.

We got home, she collapsed into sleep, woke up, chowed down, and all seemed well in the world. Except the sleeping. The sleeping, she did not return to us. The sleeping, she stayed away.

Then, last week, a tooth emerged, and then another. Of course! The fever, the fussiness, the night wakings, even clear but consistent mocos. Symptoms we've been awaiting for months. Since the drool fountain dried up, plus since we've been wrong for seven months already, we barely considered teething.

R. and I have been lucky, MZ has been a good sleeper from the start. So we are extremely unpracticed at this fine art of parenting, nay living, while sleep-deprived. Turns out I suck at this. MZ wakes up grumpy at 4 AM and I try to pretend she's not really in our bed. We decided not to impose CIO when she's on such delicate footing, but I have refused to nurse her till 6 AM, in a quite possibly too-subtle attempt to make the 4 AM start to the day more unattractive.

This morning, for the first time in weeks, she woke up cooing after a full night's sleep. And I feel like a million bucks. And I am grateful, and humbled before the parents who do this for far longer than we have so far.