In the world of babyhood, we had what counts as a religious experience last night. Right before going to bed, I read a material online outlining the mental states of overtired babies; the woman writing it noted that when babies are severely sleep-deprived, they would wake up every 1-2 sleep cycles (45 mins each) and cry intensely for about 5-10 minutes. If parents do not intervene unless the crying escalates beyond 10 minutes, babies will go back to sleep unassisted. Since Raya has been waking on average every 1-2 hours for the past month, ever since we all went through a vicious cold, we were willing to try anything to restore some sanity to our house. I put her to bed at 6.30 pm last night, and she woke up less than an hour later; we let her cry hard, and she conked out in exactly 5 minutes. The same happened again an hour later. We went to bed at 10 pm, and at 2.45 am I woke up when I heard her moving and got her to nurse since she had not eaten for more than 7 hours. She barely ate, and I put her back asleep. She woke up around 5.15 am, and we heard her babbling briefly and blowing bubbles with her mouth; then she dozed off again and slept until 6.15 am!
That's 12 hours of sleep, which is another word for miracle. We've been awake since 5 am since we were so thrilled by what was happening we didn't know how to get back to sleep, but it still feels like I've had a two-week vacation. Rest is good. Life is good.
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