In the middle of the night...

Every mother with a four month old expects to be woken up at some point or another in the middle of the night. But, I have been blessed with two great sleepers, and thereby have been spoiled now for almost 2 months of no middle of the night wake-up calls. Matt goes to bed by 7 every night and sleeps till 6:30 pretty regularly. Zach usually is in bed by 7:30-8 and up around 7 a.m. Even when he was ill last week, Zach slept the night. I know I know, I am really lucky!



Which is why last night's middle of the night wake-up was so odd. I was lying in bed, and hearing a little voice calling out to the Cookie Monster. At first I was sure I was dreaming, but I rolled over and looked at the monitor anyways, and sure enough I could see the red lights rising with the voice that was quickly rising to almost a shout. I got up, went in to Z's room. I don't know how he does it, but he can identify my husband or I by the sound of our approach. He didn't even lift his head as he said, "Hi. Mama" I could tell I was in for it, because he sounded really perky, like he was ready to start his day. I explained to him that it was the middle of the night, that it wasn't time to get up, I rubbed his hair, and told him to go back to sleep. I stayed for maybe 4 minutes, and then groggily made my way back into bed.



Within five minutes, I heard him shouting out again, Words now instead of cries, fearing he would wake his brother, Wayne, who'd been woken by my return went in to check on Z. The conversation went something like this.

Wayne (opening Z's door), "Zach it's time for you to go to sleep!"

Z: "Dada you scared me!"

W: "I didn't mean to scare you!"

Z: "Dada you mad at me?"

W: (voice taking on a softer tone) "No Zach, I'm not mad at you, but you need to go back to sleep. You don't want to wake up your Mom and brother do you? Everyone is sleeping, it's time to go back to sleep"



Within minutes, Wayne stumbles back into bed, murmurs about how he thought he'd been dreaming and falls back into a coma. Meanwhile, I lie in bed, over 30 minutes have passed since this wake-up call began, and look to the monitor. Sure enough I see the glow of the red lights as first one lights brightens followed by a 2nd, a 3rd, a 4th, a symphony of sound, and words coming faintly through the monitor, the door, my heart. I lie there praying he will sleep, and then he does it, he calls for Mama.



I'm up and out the door in what seems like seconds, knowing I should have done this from the start, I pick him up, wrap him in his blanket and my arms, and rock him like I used to when he was the four month old in the house. He tries to talk to me, asks me to read him stories, I tell him ,"hush" and shush him as we rock. Eventually his head droops to my shoulder, he shifts his legs, tucking them under him, so he is almost a ball on my lap, and he closes his eyes. As we sit there I am struck by how long he has grown, His legs are tucked up, and yet still his feet are dangling near my knees. I am awed at how his head is now more the size of a child, that that of a baby he was only months ago. His arms, which are wrapped around me, are circling my shoulders, and I realize that in a few years those arms will grow long enough to touch behind my back, when my son hugs me. I can feel his breathing calm, know from years of experience that he has finally settled back into slumber and yet I sit there holding him. Just minutes before I had been anxious to climb back under the covers, return to the state of sleep, and yet, now in his darkened room, I found myself clinging to something far more important.

Flashbacks of the nights my own mother would come to me, hold me, and sing to me flooded my mind. I remember well the way she looked in the dark of my room, the kind shadow that was there to protect me, a halo of permed hair surrounding her kind eyes. I knew when I called she would come, offer me her arms, her songs, her strength, and that all would be well. I knew that when she was there, all was right in my world, so I could sleep. Last night, I gave that to my son, sure I'd done it a hundred times before, and I'll do it a hundred times in the future, but it struck me how fleeting those moments are. Eventually you stop calling out in the night, you think "why wake someone else up?, I'm OK, I'm a big kid, I can get through this." You figure you are old enough to handle your fears, talk yourself out of your bad dreams and find a way to sleep on your own. Holding Zach in the dark of his room on the cusp of so many changes in our lives, I knew that my moments of having him crawl on my lap, cuddle close, and drift off to sleep will be fleeting. Sure, he'll call out to me, sure he'll ask me to lay in his big boy bed, but the days of cradling him in my arms are fast approaching an end, and so I savored them. I lost over an hour and a half of sleep last night, but I gained a memory I'll cherish even when he's over 6 feet tall and sleeping in his own house.

Last night, in the middle of the night, I was able to be the Mom I wanted to be. The Mom that my mother was to me. I know he slept because I was there, that he felt all was right in the world in my arms, and that in the moments between wakefulness and slumber, I was being given the sweetest kind of dream.