A Christmas Miracle

Once, many moons ago, I watched in stark amazement as a small child, four months old, same age as my child, lay in his mother's lap and with nary a movement nor nursing on her part, fell asleep. My child had never done that. Not once. Never had my infant fallen asleep without nursing or rocking or walking or driving. NEVER. 

He did it once, much later. He was almost exactly one. He had a terrible kidney infection, and we'd been at the hospital emergency almost all day. He'd missed his nap, it was five in the afternoon, and then, finally, when we'd given him more advil and the fever had gone down, I sat down on the bed in the room we'd been given, and he fell asleep. 

But that's the sum total of it. Every nap and every night of his life except for that one, there's been nursing and walking and singing and soothing. Sometimes all of those at once. What's MORE is that from the time he was nine months old, the room had to be quiet and dim without any interruptions, including a cat meowing, otherwise he'd be instantly awake again.

Yesterday, he was in a terrible mood. THere were loud wails and much knashing of teeth. I sat down to cuddle with him, and fed him two cookies, and he leaned his head back against my shoulder, and then, in a moment, I realized he was very still and very heavy, and my mother said quietly -- he's going to sleep! And there was light in the room! And music playing, and four other people talking! And he slept for an hour!

It was quite possibly the nicest hour I have had this holiday season, and not because he was quiet. Just because of the simple peace of a child sleeping in comfort on his mom.