Last night Jackson slept amazingly well. The best night of sleep he and I have had in his 22 months. He went to sleep around 9:45 pm and didn't wake up until 4:15 am! He whimpered a little in his sleep and I went to his room, curled up next to him, kissed his cheek, and patted his back. He sighed and fell straight back to sleep and didn't wake again until 7:00 am. At this point I figured he was ready to wake up, but I wasn't quite since his little brother had me waking throughout the night as well. So i brought him to bed with me and let him play with my phone (what happens most mornings, actually). After a couple minutes he was fast asleep next to me. I woke up around 9:00 am feeling refreshed and ready to go. Jackson was still sleeping. He woke up around 9:15 am. Even when he sleeps for 6-7 hour stretches, he normally doesn't sleep longer than 8 hours total at night. This was a 12 hour total night and it was amazing. We had such a pleasant morning together because we were both so well rested.
Well, tonight Jackson went down around 9:00 pm. I was ready for bed then too and was trying to settle down, but Daniel wanted to kick kick kick against the mattress (a favorite pastime for both my boys in utero). Jackson whimpered in his sleep so I went back in his room to help him calm down. He did, but then jerked awake and was crying. So this would be a night of bad dreams. I carried him to the couch and snuggled him until he was sound asleep again. I carried him back to bed, but my second wind had hit. I browsed Amazon for some details for the boys' rooms... and heard Jackson awake again around 11:30 pm. So in I go to try to calm him down. He clings to me and when I pick him up he lays his head on my shoulder and sighs. Ok, baby, you can sleep with Mumma tonight. So I make up a little bed on the couch for us and he snuggles against me and falls asleep within seconds.
I am laying there watching my little baby boy sleep and am overcome with gratitude for him. When I am in the right frame of mind (about 60% of the time, I think) I use these sleepless nights with Jackson to pray for him. I thank God for blessing me with such an incredible boy. I thank God for his happy nature, his loving heart, his growing knowledge, and his quick forgiveness. I ask God to give me wisdom as I raise him, to give me patience through discipline, to guide me to be the kind of person I want Jackson to become (as his little eyes are ever watching what I say and do). I pray for his future and the choices he will make. I pray for the friends he will meet and his future wife. I pray for his physical, emotional, and spiritual safety as he journeys through life. I pray that Matt and I will always have a strong marriage to support him and to give him a foundation of family to fall back on. I pray that Matt and I will learn quickly from our parenting mistakes and never be too proud to admit those mistakes. I thank God for granting me the extra snuggles, even if at night, because someday those snuggles won't exist anymore. Hopefully we will always be a hugging family, but sooner rather than later, Jackson won't be able to curl up next to me and fit as perfectly as a toddler can next to his Mumma.
So I use these sleepless nights as a time to pray, and that is a very great blessing. Yesterday in my Bible study lesson it discussed how Jesus would send away the people so that He could go off in private to pray to His Father. He said no to a witnessing/teaching opportunity to make sure He had time with His Father and to be sure He was in a right relationship with Him. Just like Jesus, we need to be sure we are spending time just talking to God and furthering our relationship with Him in order to be useful in every other area of our lives. I need to have time just talking to God to ensure I am the person I need to be in order to correctly parent and correctly teach Jackson about Jesus. I need to be sure I am right with God to be right with Jackson. So I thank God for these sleepless nights. God is giving me an opportunity to talk to Him.
Sometimes I stress that Jackson will still prefer to sleep next to me once Daniel arrives. I hope to have Daniel next to me in his sleeper-bed for the first three months at least and we'll go from there. I do not want to have Daniel in bed next to me like I did with Jackson as it has been a difficult transition for us all. But when I begin to stress about Jackson's sleep habits I remember that everything else so far in his little life has come at just the right time. He has started sleeping longer stretches at night and he has spent many nights in his room in his own bed. I worried that he wasn't talking and he learns new words every day now. I worried he would never wean and one day he simply understood that it was time to stop nursing. So even though he will spend tonight snuggled next to me to hopefully provide him (and I) more restful sleep, I know that when the time is right he will sleep through the night and spend the entire night in his own bed consistently. It will come and that will be a wonderful and very sad day. So I won't rush it. I will cherish the extra snuggles and thank God for my baby boy.
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