"Does She sleep through the night, yet?"

Ode to a preemie Mother and an elusive night's Sleep:

Kiera has been sleeping through the night pretty much since birth.

She slept through the night for most of 514 days in the NICU and PICU.
She slept through the night while having diapers changed, blood pressure and temperature taken, or blood gases drawn every 4 hours.
She slept through the night while Mother was getting up every 3 hours to pump breast milk for her. She slept through the night when Mother received 4 am phone calls from nurses who had to bag or reintubate her; calls which always began with "Kiera's fine now, but...."
She slept through the night when Mother would wake up from nightmares that she was dead or otherwise in crisis.

She finally comes home. She starts sleeping through the night around 10 PM.

She sleeps through the night while vent and baby are carried upstairs by 2 exhausted parents.
She sleeps through the night while a pulmonary vest treatment shakes her lungs and sounds like a helicopter circling the neighborhood.
She sleeps through the night while Mother gets up to run nebulizer treatments every 2 to 4 to 6 hours depending on her health always starting one at midnight in hopes of mother getting to sleep through the night.
She sleeps through the night when Mother gets up to suction her trach tube.
She sleeps through the night when she shimmies out of her apnea monitor and sets it off with an alarm loud enough to wake the dead...but not her.

She sleeps through the night most soundly when she is feeling well like last night.

When she is in a deep, deep sleep, she exhales around her trach cuff allowing pressure to escape and setting off a low minimum volume alarm on her ventilator; thus waking Mother as she continues to sleep through the night.
When she is in a deep, deep sleep her resting heart rate drops below 55 setting off her SAT monitor in an annoying and constant roadrunner-esque "beep-beep, beep-beep;" thus waking Mother to hit the silence every 2 minutes from 2:30AM-5:30AM as she continues to sleep through the night.
When she is in a deep, deep sleep triggering all these alarms, Mother's sleep deprivation evolves into bizarre quickie nightmares between hitting silence involving scenarios of inability to function in an emergency trach re-cannulation due to ... lack of sleep, as she continues to sleep through the night.
When she is in a deep, deep sleep, her mother's inability to rest evolves into nighttime ruminations of how exactly she will explain this to the mother's who quite innocently inquire, "Does she sleep through the night, yet?" ...as she continues to sleep through the night.

6 AM arrives. A nebulizer is given.
A brief wink is caught.
8 AM arrives. A nebulizer is given.
Another brief wink is caught.
9:30 AM arrives. Meds are late. A feeding is late. A baby who sleeps through the night stands in her crib, 2 yrs old, smiling, "Good morning, good morning!" having had a fantastic night of sleeping through the night.
Mother's coffee is ready.