Breakthrough!

At three months, Quatro’s typical night schedule is this: feed at 6:30, down by 7:15, bottle from Daddy at 11, wake somewhere between 2-4 for a drowsy snack on the boob, and up again between 6-6:30. And finally last night: we had our breakthrough.

Or so I thought.

About 10, I drifted off to la la land, dreaming, oddly enough, of high school. Any mom can identify with what happened next: I awoke on my own and when I reached over for my handy iPhone, I was shocked to read 5:50! Nevermind that I was lying in a pool of milk; my night owl had made that first sleep-through-the-night breakthrough!!

Or wait. Is he ok? I raced down the long hallway, nearly tripping over the down-then-up step of our 1970s style sunken living room, to check on him. Not wanting the clever little tyke to smell my milk soaked shirt, I slyly reached a hand out to feel the rising motion of his chest, then rapidly tip-toed out.

I did the happy dance back through the hall, already planning in those few seconds the glorious things I would tackle and accomplish now that I would be a well-rested mommy again.

I lay satisfactorily down in my bed – oops, on a huge wet spot – and closed my eyes. Are you kidding? I was too excited (and soaked) to return to sleep, so I leapt up and decided that today I would properly get ready, taking time to not only dress myself before 8:00, but also to put makeup on AND brush my hair. Imagine that! Oh the luxury of it all!

Halfway through my eye makeup I heard a faint but familiar noise. I stepped to the bathroom door. What was that? I stepped into the hallway. OH MY, it was the baby, screaming at the top of his lungs. I whirled around to stare at the monitor, whose lights were dancing loudly but was not producing any noise.

And then it dawned on me that my trusty monitor had been silenced, probably by Cubby who has discovered it’s fun flashy lights and rapid almost-out-of-range beeping, and quite frequently mistakes it as a toy. My little guy probably HAD woken up around 3 am, but silent monitor left me slumbering peacefully in my bed, unaware.

Baby monitors have probably only been around for a few decades, and certainly have been mistakenly turned off or muted by hundreds of moms (or weary husbands!) before me. So I’m not alone in this experience. And Quatro was clearly completely fine.

But so much for the “breakthrough.”