…why doesn’t somebody fix it?

i know. i’m hilarious.

but all my life, i’ve suspected that morning was a cruel plot dreamed up by sadists in order to rob me of the pleasure of my warm, sleepy nest…no other purpose for it than that. one of the reasons i think i hesitated about parenthood until i passed thirty was that i couldn’t imagine consistently getting up before nine am…or better, noon. the fact that i worked an erratic schedule (read: slept my lazy ass in half the time) did little to assure me that i would actually survive without fairly regular morning naps.

and thus far, i have…i have! (takes bow). but i have a dirty little secret, internet. i’ve been cheating. i haven’t really been doing much of the morning parenting.

in the early days, when O had what-might-as-well-have-been-colic and alternately screamed and nursed through the nights, Dave & i settled into a routine. i got up at night, and he got up in the morning. fair trade, worked for both of us, kept me moderately sane and unembittered at three am, because i knew that come seven, no matter what, i could go back to bed until Dave went to work. praise Jeebus.

and we just kept doing that. even though Oscar has actually been sleeping through the night pretty consistently for…oh…about seven months now. i kinda thought maybe Dave hadn’t noticed. :)

apparently he had. he was just biding his time.

most mornings, if Oscar peeps at god-forsaken hours, (which is anything before six-thirty, in my current estimation of time) i’m the one who pops up and goes to him and tries to soothe him and usually fails – because my child is a Morning Person, oh cruel fates – and then eventually lifts him from the crib. but we don’t stay up. we go to the big bed, curl up against the sleeping lump that is daddy, and nurse. and snuggle a bit, and are purred on by the cat, and doze. or i doze, which is really what i’m looking for from a morning, after all. Oscar flails and sucks and plays with my bracelet and occasionally turns around and gives a squeak of delight about the fact that the cat is perched nearly atop his head, and we all get about twenty minutes of this, and i love it. love it. then if it’s seven o’clock already and a work day, daddy gets up with Oscar and mommy goes back to sleep for another forty-five minutes or an hour.

i am a spoiled, spoiled woman.

and it’s all about to change. because now that we’re back from The Big Trip and O has settled into his twice-weekly days at the sitters and daddy’s not doing anymore business trips for awhile and we’re still likely a good few weeks from me starting any kind of full-time job thingy, it seems like a reasonable time to wean, finally. no other major adjustments going on this week, and doing it now’ll give us a chance to get into a bit of a routine in terms of the New Morning Order before i actually go out to work…it makes sense. i know it makes sense.

but (cue violins)….i don’ waaaannaaaaa!!!!! (end violins).

i never really believed that O and i would make it past a few months breastfeeding, once we started juggling bottles and formula in the mix when he was eight weeks old. a few times, i was sure we were done. yet, on we’ve trucked, haphazardly. for months now, our nursing has been only a first-thing-in-the-morning and last-thing-at-night operation, a bit of a cuddle to open and close the day. it was supposed to miraculously quiet him on our flight to Europe…which definitely did NOT happen…but the prospect of The Big Trip was what kept me nursing to his one-year birthday, nonetheless. at least ostensibly. in truth, i couldn’t really figure out what we’d do in the mornings if i stopped. i mean, this child often wakes somewhere in the vicinity of six am. was i supposed to just…gasp…GET UP?!?

surely you jest.

but when i broached this conversation with the cold-hearted bastard Oscar’s patient, loving father last evening, he suggested that getting up was, indeed, what i really ought to consider doing. what we actually ought to consider doing. both of us, out of bed. on the same morning. downstairs with Oscar. drinking coffee and presumably conversing, around about the time we used to go to bed. i looked at him blankly. he apparently wasn’t kidding. he’s even looking forward to this. Dave has, it seems, been hiding a secret fondness for mornings from me, all these years, out of respect for my aversion to them. he was just waiting ’til i was ready to wean to break it to me.

now i know who to blame for Oscar’s early rising.

so this is it, internet. my last day nursing my boy who is no longer a baby. my last day as a lie-abed slag. my last day before the New Morning Order turns me into one of those people who make snide comments about other people sleeping in. i am awash in nervousness, and a little sliver of sentimentality about all my years spent spurning the morning…this will, if it actually works, be a significant identity change for someone who’s been hibernatory all her life.  it’s scary, to commit to mornings.  it’s scary, to wean this little boy. i’m grateful to have been able to hold on as long as i have, to my bed, to nursing O, to the morning pile of two adults and baby and cat in a bed, all purring dozily. i’m going to miss that nest, that snuggling.

tell me there are better things to come. tell me Oscar & i will still find places in our days for cuddling, even though he’s like a bouncing ball whenever he’s not eating.  tell me i can sleep in again when he’s twelve.  please.  Dave needs backup on this plan, methinks.