Answered Prayers

I remember many moons ago when I would go to bed, sleep peacefully through the night, and wake up well-rested and ready to go. A bad night was when I had a nightmare or had drank too much caffeine a little too late in the day and couldn't immediately drift off to sleep. But those days ended about three years ago when I was pregnant with Kate. Even after Kate started sleeping through the night, which wasn't until she was nearly TWO!, I was pregnant again, and everyone knows a pregnant body is not conducive to good sleep.

Cora started out a great sleeper. She would take three good naps a day and sleep five hours straight at night. Then, about a month ago, things changed. She had a growth spurt and wanted to eat every two hours at night. And then she started teething, which resulted in waking every four hours when her pain medicine quit working. Still, on good days, she takes two two-hour naps and a shorter nap later in the day, but lately that has been hit or miss. For awhile there I was stressing ridiculously about her lack of sleep until I realized there wasn't anything I could really do about it; I mean I couldn't make her sleep, and my methods of getting her to sleep did not always work. I had become reluctantly content with the fact that this child is not a good sleeper. Big surprise. Neither is her sister.

So when I went to bed last night, I totally expected to be up within an hour to feed Cora because she had been asleep since 6:45. Imagine my surprise when I woke up at 3:30 and my little angel had not cried out even once! I panicked. Was she still breathing? Had she gotten her blanket over her face and suffocated? Cora had moved out of the monitor camera's range, so I quietly tiptoed into her room and saw that she was sleeping peacefully. That is, until I tripped on a bag of diapers and woke her up. Only me.

Still, this was the first time EVER that Cora has slept for nine hours straight. And that means that I slept for six whole uninterrupted hours. I'm a new woman this morning. And while I know that this night might not happen again for months, maybe years, I thank God (and my praying friends) for that precious sleep.