Sleep — it's a good thing

Parents of young babies are probably the most sleep-deprived people on earth. You see them at work, nodding off in their coffee, their bloodshot eyes drooping closed during meetings. They have a harried look about them, with their hastily selected, sometimes mismatched clothing and impaired ability to follow a conversation. They pace the floors at night or fall asleep sitting up, only to awaken hours later and be unable to turn their head to the right all day. Then, when they finally get their little tyrant to fall asleep, they go to lay him down and — bam. Awake and screaming. Again.

What some little babies do to their parents' sleep is prohibited under the Geneva Convention.

But that's so not what's happening at our house. At the risk of tempting fate and inciting hate mail from zombie moms and dads, I will just come out and say it: Our baby is a freak.

As long as she's fed, her diaper is clean, and it's after 9 or so, I can lay a fully awake Kayla (3-1/2 months) in her crib and she rolls onto her side, plugs her thumb into her mouth, and goes to sleep. Just like that. No crying. No endlessly repeated attempts to transfer her to the crib without waking her. She just sort of accepts that it's bedtime and zonks out.

And to make things even more improbable, she then proceeds to sleep through the night, without waking, until such time as I go in and get her up in the morning. That's right — I get her up. Around 8:30 or 9, I go in and wake her up to feed her before work. And she greets me with a big smile, like being woken up is the best thing that's ever happened to her.

I'm pretty sure I have the easiest, happiest baby ever.

Of course, now that I've put that in writing and sent it out into cyberspace for tens of people to read, it will probably change. I'm operating under the certainty that every night will be the last night of blissful baby sleep. I'm also half expecting someone with expertise in these matters to tell me "Yeah, that seems nice now, but it actually means she'll grow up to be a serial killer."

But for now, I'm just enjoying my tiny sleep machine. And how am I taking advantage of this fortuitous arrangement? By sleeping? No. By sitting up at the computer at 2 a.m., writing about it.

She definitely doesn't get her sleep tendencies from me.