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The Night Wanderer

Posted December 4, 2007

I laugh when I hear someone use the term “sleeping like a baby.”

Like a baby? Like what baby?

Guster—unlike his mother—has never been a big sleeper. Eight hours is the most he ever needs. I remember being a new mom of a newborn and hearing my friends talk about how their babies slept 12 hours a night.

I’d like to think I’m a nice enough person but frankly, I wanted to kick them in the teeth.

So as Gus has grown, we’ve had to choose between having to stay up later than we’d like to with him in order to “sleep in” until 7 a.m., or put him down at a more toddler-friendly hour and be awakened by the thump-thump-thump of his footfalls at 5 bells the next morning.

Neither choice sounds particularly thrilling if you ask me.

This past summer, Gus went through a strange two-week period where he was suddenly unable to sleep through the night. He was waking up nearly every hour on the hour and crying out for us—usually me—to come in and rock him or rub his back. I even camped out on an air mattress next to his bed for a week in order to get any amount of decent sleep.

Then, as quickly as it occurred, it vanished and he was back to normal.

Until this week.

Last night, for example, Guster came into our room at 1:30, 2:30 and 4:30. I got up first, Rick got up second, and I cracked and did what I said I’d never do on the third round.

I pulled him up into the bed with us.

I had to do it! I was desperate! The alarm was going off in an hour! I needed sleep, I tell you!

My friend Prudence told me this would happen and I didn’t listen. There were a bunch of couples eating sushi in Greenville back when Rick and I first got married. I was one of the only women who wasn’t a mom but I foolishly felt like I knew it all.

“My child will never, ever sleep in my bed,” I announced, attacking my California roll with my chopsticks. “That is the worst habit and so hard to break. The key is to never start.”

Prudence took a sip of her wine and raised her eyebrows.

“You say that now, but you’ll do it. You’ll be so tired. You’ll want to sleep so badly and it’ll be so easy to just pull that child up in that warm bed,” she said. The other moms around her nodded in agreement.

I continued on my idiot rant.

“No way,” I scoffed. “I will never do that.”

Prudence, if you’re reading this, I’m eating my words with as much vigor as I did my California roll that night.

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