"It's amazing what you sleep through, Peter"

I've always had the ability to sleep through just about anything (which I clearly didn't pass on to Mika). As a baby, my mom used to run the vacuum under my bed when I was napping. In college, I would fall asleep reading for class, only to wake up a couple hours later to find a crowd of people hanging out in my dorm room -- some even sitting on my bed.

When we got Hachi, he couldn't make it through the night without 1 or 2 bathroom breaks (which we preferred he take outside the house, so we had to wake up and take him to the yard). Each time we got ready to go to bed, I would cheerfully tell Yuki: "Wake me up when he needs to go out!" When the time came to make good on that promise, Yuki would shake me and I'd mumble something about wanting to help and keep on snoozing. She eventually gave up and took over the late-night pee watch on her own.

I was determined to do a better job with Mika. And for the last two weeks, I was doing pretty well. At the hospital, I would spring awake when it was time to feed Mika. When we got home, I took a lot of late-night shifts to help her settle down. But lately, I've been losing the battle to my sleep comas.

The first warning sign came last week. We were asleep, and Mika started fussing and crying. The whole thing is pretty hazy to me, but apparently I turned to Yuki and asked "Do you need a burp cloth?" and then promptly passed out again. Two nights ago, I got my first long stretch of sleeping since we came home with the baby. When I woke up around 5AM, I rolled over and said to Yuki: "Wow, Mika's starting to sleep through the night!" Yuki rolled her eyes and explained that Mika wailed all night and she was awake all night trying to calm her down.

Then last night, Yuki was feeding Mika in the baby's room (less than 10 feet from our bedroom), when Mika threw up everywhere. Yuki called for me... and called for me... and called for me. I never had a clue.

One of our friends recently told a story about a set of new parents she knew. When things got tough with their newborn, they'd joke about flushing the kid down the toilet. This morning, Yuki said to me "It's amazing what you sleep through, Peter" and then wondered aloud if I would fit in our toilet. I may have been a bit premature in clearing a spot on our mantle for my Father-of-the-year award!