Paying Up

So. A few nights ago, Cubby slept through the night for the first time, from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. Of course, I did not sleep that whole time. Mostly because I woke up at four in the morning, looked at the clock, and immediately assumed the baby was dead because WHY DIDN'T HE WAKE UP TO EAT AT TWO?

He wasn't dead; he was just tired.

But I knew I would pay for that one night of uninterrupted sleep. It didn't happen the next night, when he slept from 7:30 p.m. until 3:30 a.m. And it didn't happen the night after that, either. No, payback arrived last night, in the form of a zonked out Cubby at 7:15 p.m. who subsequently woke up screaming for milk at 8:15 p.m., midnight, 3:30 a.m., 5 a.m., and 7 a.m. He fell back asleep after each feeding, but a fat lot of good that does me when the feedings are two hours apart.

He'd better get REALLY BIG after this growth spurt. I want to see some results for all my hard work, dammit.

But lest I sound too bitter, I should mention that when he woke me up at 7 a.m., I was in the middle of a dream in which I was giving him for unknown reasons (like, for good, for adoption or something) to people who were about to feed him formula, and (in the dream) he was staring at me with his big blue eyes and I just felt so sad that I wasn't feeding him.

Then I woke up to those big blue eyes (and that big screaming mouth) and didn't feel sad anymore. Just tired. But I'll take the tired over the sad any day.