Behold the amazing sleeping baby

Alyssa is a good sleeper. And I'm feeling guilty about it.

Amanda was one of those babies who woke up every 2 or 3 hours all night every night and this went on for a very (and when I say very I mean VERY) long time. She slept for longer stretches as time went on, but she didn't actually sleep through the night on a regular basis until she was a couple months short of her third birthday. By then I was pregnant with Alyssa and was up every few hours to pee so I never really got to enjoy the uninterrupted sleep.

I've heard that difficulty sleeping while you're pregnant is nature's way of preparing you for after the baby is born when you'll need to be up every few hours. And oh, did I ever feel prepared… totally prepared to care for a newborn alarm clock that went off at 2-3 hour intervals expecting to be fed. But instead I got Alyssa, the amazing sleeping baby.

At night, Alyssa usually sleeps at least six hours at a stretch, often more. But I wake up every 2-3 hours to wonder why she's not crying… to check to see if she's breathing… to gaze at her sleeping and wish that I were sleeping too… to watch infomercials and Oprah re-runs... and to feel guilty.

Her pediatrician says she's growing just fine and has assured me there's no need to wake her up to feed her. So I'm not feeling guilty that I might be starving the poor little thing, I'm feeling guilty that there are parents out there who would really be taking advantage of a sleeping baby by actually sleeping themselves. Not me. I've spent the last three years complaining about my lack of sleep but now that I have the opportunity to sleep, my body or my brain just won't let me do it.

I have to admit now that during those several non-sleeping years with Amanda that if you told me about your angelic baby who had slept through the night from the moment you brought her home from the hospital, I was probably not quite as happy for you as I might have appeared. In fact I may have had some pretty evil thoughts about you in the middle of one of my many sleepless nights. It's nothing personal, trust me. I didn't really mean it when I had fantasies about your little sleeping angels growing up to be wild-partying-fast-driving-law-breaking-completely-uncontrollable teenagers so that you wouldn't get a decent night's sleep for years on end. But it just seemed so unfair.

And now I know that it is unfair. Some people don't deserve amazing sleeping babies. People like ME, who just waste them.