The dreaded question

Dear Catalina,
Ever since we have been brave enough to take you outside of the safety of the walls of this house, there have been two responses that are uttered from the people to whom you are introduced 1) "Look at those cheeks!" and 2) "Does she sleep through the night?"  At first, I didn't think much of the question.  It is commonly known that babies keep their parents (mostly their mothers) up for the first few months of life.  It is a source of pride for parents to announce that their child is "already sleeping through the night" at a young age.  Although you rarely slept all the way through a night, for the first three months of your life you were a pretty easy baby to get along with during the night.  Even so, the question began to annoy me.  Why do people care so much about your sleeping habits?  For some reason it really bothered me when it came from people who had never had children.  It seemed to me that they were judging both of us by your sleep habits.  Some babies sleep and others have trouble.  There is no relationship between future behaviors or intelligence levels and the number of consecutive hours a child sleeps at 3 months old!  

Even worse, for the last few months you have not been sleeping well at all!  Lately you have decided that waking up every 2 hours to eat is perfectly acceptable.  For the past few days it seems that holding court with your daddy at 4 in the morning is also on the agenda.  Whereas in the first few months, I didn't feel sleep deprived, the last few weeks have been horrible.  So now I wince when I hear the dreaded question, "Is she sleeping through the night?"  I feel like I will have to explain myself and apologize for my shortcomings as a parent.  You are still in our bedroom, for example.  In fact, for most of the night, you share our bed.  Many would say the reason you don't sleep through the night is because you can smell that mommy (and therefore milk) is near.  Selfishly, however, I love having you to cuddle with us in the morning.  I'm not working right now, so part of me feels like I should just enjoy this time with you--even if it means fewer hours of sleep.  There is another part of me that worries that it will be hard to get you into your own bed when the time comes.  Aaarrrgh.  I so love waking up and looking over at your smiling little face--even if it is 4 in the morning!

Basically, I want to answer back, "What's the big deal??  Its none of your business whether she sleeps through the night!"

Love you darling,
Mommy