LizaWasHere

I don’t want to jinx it, but I think maybe possibly I have my good-sleeping, sweet baby back.

(Noah, of course we love you even when you are a crabby, tired, puddle of drool, who wakes up every 3-4 hours. But we like it better when you are cheerful, sweet, and sleeping through the night.)

Last night, he had a hard time falling asleep, just spacily looking around and nursing until 8:15 pm or so, but he stayed asleep until 5 am! And the night before, he fell asleep around 7:15 pm (more normal for Noah), woke up once to interrupt Project Runway, and then slept through until ~5:30 am.

(On Wednesday, I violated my rule that if he wakes up in the night, we stay in his room and nurse in the dark until he’s back asleep. (Night = any time from when he falls asleep until 5 am.) He came downstairs at 10:15 and we all watched Project Runway together.)

This morning, he chatted with the Ugly Doll in his crib from 5-5:15 am, and then after he ate, chatted up a storm with me, smiling and cooing like the baby of my dreams.

OK, I’ve been avoiding blogging about this for 3 or 4 weeks.

At first, my excuse was that Noah’s DC grandparents would worry too much if they heard about this on the blog before they saw that he was ok. But really, I just feel like an idiot who should have my parenting license suspended. Not that I could bear such a thing.

I took Noah with me to the awesomely cool farmers market 5 minutes from my house a few weeks ago. In the store, I had Noah in his bjorn, not in the car seat. The fancy new carseat designed for extra-large infants stayed in the car.

After we finished shopping, I put the groceries in the back (it’s a small SUV, 2001/pre-LATCH) and then buckled Noah into the carseat, handed him a toy, and headed home.

When I turned the corner out of the farmer’s market drive, the carseat toppled over.

I tried desparately not to panic and make the situation worse by having a full blown traffic accident and pulled into the next available driveway, maybe 200 yards further. In the mean time, the carseat rolled so that Noah was completely face down, still buckled into the carseat.

I practically leapt out of the car and righted the carseat, where through no fault of my own, Noah continued to contentedly play with his toy. He was perfectly fine. He appeared to not even have noticed rolling over in the carseat.

Mommy, not so much.

See, I’d buckled Noah into the carseat, but I hadn’t buckled the carseat into the car. In the old carseat, we installed seat bases in both cars. But installing the seat base was hard, and getting someone to check and make sure we did it right was incredibly inconvenient. We decided to just go with the strapping it in every time option instead.

Except, of course, that I hadn’t.

I’d wrestled He Who Loathes Being Put Into The Carseat into the carseat, and forgotten that there was more wrestling.

When I could breathe again, I buckled the seat into the car, drove home, and confessed everything to Jill. She was great, and promised that it didn’t mean I’m a horrible mother, and didn’t prohibit me from ever driving Noah anywhere again until he’s 25.

But other than being relieved to know how well the carseat works, I still feel rotten about it. And horribly nervous. What if the seat hadn’t toppled over so quickly? What if it happened on a busy street? What if I got in an accident and the seat wasn’t properly fastened into the car?