Fear

There are many things in life that can make you draw your breath in a moment of fear.  Spiders.  Strange noises when you're home alone.  Clowns.

But as a mother, there is one thing that can make your heart sink and your breath draw in just as fast as any of those items above.

The baby monitor at night.

Especially after you have finally gotten baby to sleep for stretches of hours...like eight hours.

Yep.  Little Katerina is sleeping consistently eight hours at night before waking up to eat and then she'll sleep another 4ish hours on top of that.  It has been wonderful.

But I've been soft.

I have been letting her sleep in the swing all night.

Why? 

EIGHT hours!  That's why.

With Jackie I was stubborn and strong.  She WAS NOT going to get used to sleeping in the swing at night.  She WAS NOT going to sleep in our room.  SHE WOULD SLEEP IN HER CRIB AND LIKE IT!

And she did.

But things have been different with little Kit-Kat.

I still didn't let her sleep in our room longer than 2-3 weeks...and that was longer than I wanted to. 

But once she started sleeping well in the swing she stayed there.  I kept promising myself that I would transition her to the crib before going back to work. HA!

By then the FEAR had set in.

You see...with Jackie, if she woke up often and had a bad night (which was rare, but did happen) I had four and a half months of maternity leave.  It was during the summer and we were home all day by ourselves.  If she had a bad night, we could lounge around all day and nap whenever we wanted.  It worked great.

But this time...I went back to work after 9 weeks of maternity leave.  Which is better than 6, I got lucky with Christmas Break added in there. 

Once Kat started sleeping great I was scared.  Scared of trying to be the kind of teacher and mommy I was before baby came along without much sleep.  Scared of getting sick because of lack of sleep. (There is something here folks...I get sick when I'm not getting good sleep.)  Scared of being exhausted and tired while trying to keep a climbing toddler from scaling the bar stools or the shelves in the pantry.  There would be no recovery days from bad nights. I have a toddler.  A VERY active toddler.

We have a routine, and it's a good one.  But much of that relies on Katerina and how well she sleeps.

But that's all going to come to an end.

This morning I went to get her out of the swing...and I smelled it.

Not poop.  I would have welcomed the smell of poop over this.

The smell of burnt rubber or burnt something mechanical.

The smell of the motor in the swing.

The swing was on...no swinging was happening.

Crap.

The engineer inside my husband is going to look at it and see what he can do, but for now I am dreading the night.

Because fear or no fear, Katerina is sleeping without the motion of the swing tonight.

Maybe I'm overreacting.  Maybe she will surprise me.  Maybe this will end up a smooth transition to the crib. 

Maybe... but I'm still afraid of that monitor going off!