i don't believe in jinxes

At least, that's what I need to convince myself of before I go shouting this out for all the world (or at least the 8 people who read my blog) to hear. So, that out of the way, here goes.

Clara has slept through the night!

Not just the "sleeping through the night means sleeping between the hours of twelve midnight and five AM" kind of sleeping that they try to tell you about to make yourself feel better when you have a newborn. I'm talking about the putting her to bed at 7:30 PM and not hearing a peep from her until 7:00 the next morning kind. This is the good stuff, people.

Sunday night, after getting cry-it-out advice from my muses Janine and Sarah, Chria and I steeled ourselves to try and get Clara to drop her one remaining late night feeding, figuring it was as good a time as any since I was returning to work this week. We were prepared to fail, since she is still pretty young, just shy of four months old, and if she needs the food, I didn't think I'd be able to handle lying in bed listening to her wail for very long. But we thought we'd give it a try. Here's how it panned out:

7:45 PM
5 oz bottle for Clara (2 oz formula, 3 oz breastmilk). Off to bed!

1:15 AM
I wake up because Chria is grinding his teeth. Look at the baby monitor. Nothing.

1:45 AM
I wake up because Chria is grinding his teeth. Tell him to put his mouthgard in. Look at the baby monitor. Nothing.

3:00 AM
I wake up and go pee. Peek into Clara's room. See a snoozing baby. Back to sleep.

4:00 AM
Toss and turn because boobs are about to explode. Continue doing this for an hour, figuring that Clara will wake up soon, and I'll be too uncomfortable to let her cry, and that it wouldn't count as cheating anyhow, since anytime after 4 AM is technically the morning, right?

5:15 AM (I think)
Fall back asleep.

5:45 AM
Clara wakes up.

So I got a really lousy night's sleep, but sweet Clara got the longest sleep of her life to date. AND she did a repeat performance for the last two nights, stretching her sleep a teeny bit longer each night.

One night, I would call it a fluke. She's teased us like this before. Two nights, I start to get my hopes up. But three nights! I think we're onto something here.

I know that with all of this stuff it's like taking one step forward and two steps back, so I can't be surprised or upset if this doesn't stick. But just the knowledge that she can do it is wonderful news indeed. I think we'll keep her.


Now if only we could do something about that teeth-grinding.