Dora's Long Night

You've got fourteen minutes. Go!

Oh, wait. I've got fourteen minutes. If it takes you fourteen minutes to read this, well, I suppose I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you had to take some time out in the middle to make dinner or advise a presidential candidate or paint your toenails or something.

I know you're clamouring to find out how it went last night. Did I fall at the first fence? Did Mabel submit to the will of her father? Did terror reign?

Actually, I'll tempt fate right now by saying it went pretty well. Better than I could have imagined, though not magically well or anything. There was a moment when she'd slept a microsecond longer than usual after going to bed, when I thought maybe she'd decided it wouldn't be worth waking up at all, and she'd just sleep through to 8am instead - but then she realised that if she did that, I'd be up every hour checking her pulse and holding a mirror and a tiny flashlight in front of her nose to see if she was breathing, so she decided to spare me that. Thoughtful child.

So Mabel went to sleep, as is fairly usual for a day she has napped, at 8.30 last night. I nursed her to sleep, though there were also two batches of stories and one ritual-sending-away-of-Daddy before she was actually out. She slept until 10.30, maybe even 10.45, and woke, as usual. B went in to her. We've been doing this for a while now with the first waking, so it wasn't a surprise, and sometimes she falls back asleep while waiting for me to come after he's persuaded her to lie back down, because that's all he's good for as far as she's concerned. (She doesn't know about the paying-bills part yet.) But last night, probably because we'd talked about how the mumeet would be not forthcoming during the night, she wasn't falling back asleep. B passed the metaphorical baton to me and I squared my shoulders against the coming onslaught as I entered her room, who knew when or in what condition to ever leave again.

But! Miracle! She asked for mumeet, was told there would be none, and after some fairly rudimentary protests, lay down and said I should tell her a story instead. I got two-thirds of the way through Goldilocks, adding some long pauses for dramatic effect, and lo! she was mostly asleep again. I had to wait quite a while before she was asleep enough for me to actually leave, but it was much, much easier than I had been expecting.

The same thing happened at 1am or whenever it was she woke next. I didn't bother sending B in, because (a) he was fast asleep, and (b) what was the point? If she knows I'm in the house, she's going to want me to be the one with her, even if I deny her what she wants most. She has to hear it from the source, I suppose. This time, again we had the formal protest, but half of The Three Billy Goats Gruff was enough to get her back to sleep. (I don't actually know what the biggest billy goat said to the troll, or what the troll said to him, because I didn't get to that page of the book when I read it to her at school yesterday, so it was good that she fell asleep before my ignorance was exposed.)

The third time - and to be honest I can't even remember if I went back to my own bed before this one or just stayed where I was - she was more insistent, more upset, and louder. She was still awake after two long and involved Dora and Diego stories (and I have to say that even half asleep in the middle of the night, I can compose a more logical and interesting Dora story than the ones we've had from the library), so I made an executive decision to call it a night and give her what she wanted. "Five seconds," I said, but that never works with her the way it used to with her brother, so it was a very long five seconds on one side, and an actual five seconds on the other, and she went back to sleep.

The next time she woke it was probably 7.30, I could see daylight at the side of the curtain, and I let her have her way with abandon.

Tonight, we'll see what happens. I was proud of us both - but mostly of Mabel, to be fair - for getting as far as we got last night, and I don't regret giving in when I did. If I don't nurse her between bedtime and 3am, that's still a huge step forward from where we were, and we'll get to where we're going in the end.