I Need You

I just told someone last weekend how good of a sleeper the lil' dude has always been.

I would never fabricate the fine details of our good fortune. She slept through the night beginning at five days old. Seriously. My own Mama was still staying with us post-hospital discharge, so I have two reliable witnesses. Anyhow, as I was saying, sleep. Never in the middle of the night did the lil' dude magically appear in our doorway or bed. I never had to tiredly shoo, shoo, shoo her away or retuck her in 40 times.

And when I said that out loud, I admitted I probably wished it HAD happened.  I never had great stories of why I looked like shit the next day, bags 3-deep under my eyes, brain a foggy disarray. I never had the opportunity to watch marathon episodes of whatever was on E! in the middle of the night. I never had to hurriedly disengage a sweat mass of mini-human off my chest when the alarm went off. I never.

On this side of it, I know everything works out exactly how it's supposed to happen. I take nothing for granted. I know our foray into parenting was ... without the right words for it, made simple by an utterly awesome kid who knew what she was doing when she came into our lives.

Back to the point of this post.

A night or two after I lamented about my sleepful baby, she screamed out for me at 4am.
She screamed so loud, I NEED YOU, MAMA! and I was sprinting through the dark toward that dreadful sound before I registered what was actually happening.

Monsters; several.
Lights; on.
Soothing; forthcoming.

After I calmed down my baby girl she said, I have something to ask you but I know you'll say no.
What? I asked her.
Will you stay with me, right in my bed?
Will I ever. Try to evict me!

I shoved 34 stuffies off her bed, settled the quilt mountain and bevy of pillows and bedded down, her heat-seeking missile status clinging to my chest for the next 150 minutes until the sun rose and so did we. She clung to me like her life depended on it. If I tried to roll over, she proved her tether by rolling with me.

Stay this way, Mama, so I can feel your breathing.