Victory chant.

Seven and a half hours. Seven and a half hours! I'm repeating it over and over in my head. It's my new victory chant. It's a chant that means things are starting to work. Things are starting to fall into place. Jason and I are starting to sink into our new lives, after five weeks of blindly wading through these new waters.

The type-A part of my brain took over yesterday morning. I decided to keep a chart for just a week of Adelyn's daily routine, hoping that it would clue me in to her schedule. Because I know one's in there somewhere, I just have a hard time remembering it day after day.

So I frantically tried to keep up with when she slept, ate and pooped. And yesterday, of course, Adelyn decided to sleep in one-hour intervals and only eat 2 ounces at a time. It took until 9 p.m. for me to say screw it and focus on playing with her rather than running back to the kitchen to mark intake on my fridge. But I think I'll leave the barely-completed schedule up there for a while, maybe to remind myself that she's only five weeks old and will do as she damned-well pleases. Or maybe I'll just take a permanent marker and write "Seven and a half hours!" over all of it.

If you've ever had a newborn in your house you know how triumphant this feels. Jason and I had mastered a pretty decent rhythm over the past five weeks, but it was one of survival, not life. I'd been heading to bed around 10, while Jason stayed up with Adelyn until one. He'd then feed her one last time and bring her upstairs to the Pack 'N Play in our room. (This way, I'd get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, or even just to myself.) Then I'd get up with Adelyn the next time she cried, usually around four or five in the morning, letting Jason sleep until 7 or 8 without interruption. While that was working, it also meant that Jason and I didn't get to actually go to bed together. And that's perfectly fine in the beginning, I think. As long as we were both functioning, breathing human beings with a newborn at home, we didn't have room to complain.

Last night, though, we took the plunge and disrupted the working schedule. We stayed up--together!--watched Lost--together!--gave Adelyn a bath and fed her one last time--together!--swaddled her and put her to sleep. This was at 11.

I woke up in a panic at 6:45 when I realized that Adelyn still hadn't cried. I jumped out of bed and ran to her bassinet, where she was just stirring from sleep, sucking on her fingers.

Seven and a half hours. Seven and a half!