All-Nighters

This phrase used to have such a fun meaning back in middle school and high school. It brought to mind thoughts of fun parties with friends consisting of innocent games of truth-or-dare, movies, pizza, and ice cream that lasted into the early mornings hours. In college, an "all-nighter" looked a little bit more grim, generally describing a sleepless night of studying before final exams, or typing and hitting backspace a thousand times before completing a 40 page paper due in the morning and not yet started.

As an adult, the phrase "all-nighter" had all but dropped out of my vocabulary. Sure, there are late nights, long nights, middle-of-the-nights, and endless nights, none of which share the same previously discussed connotations of "all-nighters," at least in my personal dictionary.

The past 2 nights have revived the term. Saturday night, especially, kicked off the resurrection of the more negative "all-nighter" phrase. We've heard about these happening with babies and tried to ignore the stories and avoid working up a traumatic mental image of what this actually might look like. It's been 4 months, and we finally had our first "all-nighter" experience with Amaris.

Somehow, through this cold that she has had, she seems to have forgotten how to suck her thumb to sooth herself to sleep. This was a sensible decision on her part, because every time she sucks her thumb she struggles to breath due to her stuffy nose. Smart kid, learns quickly. However, now she has trouble putting herself to sleep at night, and back to sleep when she wakes up for some weirdo baby reason (they have millions I'm sure).

Saturday night began with her usual bedtime of 8pm . After a trip to her bedroom every 40 minutes, by 12:30 am we ended up in the living room with me sleeping on our usually cozy armchair and Jonathan on the couch, Amaris in my arms and me on duty to lull her back to sleep each time she awoke. Between 8-12:30 these trips involved responding to her crying by trying to sooth her with a pacifier, remind her of her thumb's magic, and finally picking her up, lulling her back to sleep, carefully laying her down and tip-toeing out of the room hoping she would stay put. The feeling of success came to an abrupt end within 35-40 minutes when she started screaming.

I'm sure being sick, her ears don't feel the greatest and she just feels awful overall, so if I was that small and could convince someone to put me to sleep in their arms instead of laying in a lonely bed, I would totally do the same thing. Props to you Amaris for knowing how to get what you want and sleep in ultimate comfort. On the other hand, please remember that you are one of the few mammals that is blessed with opposable thumbs, which in your case, are extremely useful for achieving peaceful sleep.

Anyhow, thankfully, it took us 4 months to experience these, and last night was a little bit better-at least we all slept in our respective beds and only woke up twice, so I think this problem will resolve itself soon. I'd like to put the word "all-nighter" back in my dictionary of retired words.