Last Night

As a first time parent one of the experiences that I have been dreading is the night that Conor would climb out of his crib in the middle of the night. What if he hurt himself? What if we didn't hear him? How would we get him to stay in his crib the next night? Well, my friends, that night was last night. Warren and I are still in shock that it actually happened. I have found myself wondering if perhaps it was just a bad dream. Here is the story; I'll try not to leave out any of the details.

Conor had a hard time sleeping last night; he woke up numerous times crying. So, Warren and I took turns going to his room to calm him down and attempt to get him to go back to sleep. Between the two of us we rocked him, rubbed his head, rubbed his back, changed his diaper, made sure he didn't have a fever, turned on the humidifier, turned off the humidifier, covered him with a blanket, uncovered him, rocked him again. Each time the same thing would happen. He would fall asleep, we'd sneak out of the room, get back into bed, and pray that he stayed asleep. However, each time he'd begin to cry again after about 10 minutes. We were exhausted and frustrated. If felt as if we had been awake the entire night. Finally, the last time he woke up was about 6am. I made the decision to just let him cry for a few minutes...surely he was exhausted too...maybe he'd fall asleep eventually.

Suddenly I began to hear the crying getting closer to me. Then I heard the pitter patter of Conor's chubby little feet on the bathroom tile! My heart sank. I jumped up and said "Warren! He got out!" Immediately as I said that, the double doors to our bedroom swung open and there he was. Looking almost as surprised as we must have looked. He looked so small and helpless. I scooped him up and put him in our bed. I said "Baby, are you okay?" and he just whimpered, "Yeah". Then he turned over and fell asleep.

I finally fell asleep too. It was the best hour of sleep that I got all night. Unfortunately the entire time I dreamt about Conor escaping in the middle of the night and running down the street. I would call out to him to come back, but he would just keep running...

You might be asking yourself, "Where is the adorable picture of Conor that normally accompanies a post on the blog?" Had I not been in such a state of shock I would have taken a picture. The image of him standing there just staring at me will forever be burned in my memory.

On a side note: if any of you have any great suggestions on what we're supposed to do now that he can get out his crib...we would love to hear them!