Alarmist Parenting

It occurs to me that it says a lot about Julia's babyhood pattern of (non-)napping that, when she suddenly became drowsy and unresponsive today during the five-minute drive home from a morning full of errands and park-playing---head lolling onto the back of her carseat, arms going limp, eyelids fluttering as I talked to her when we rolled into the garage, speech flat and monosyllabic---that my first reaction was not, "Oh, my baby just fell asleep in the car after a busy morning and an exhausting weekend visiting relatives," but instead: "Oh my god, what's wrong with Julia--honey, are you all right? Are you all right? Are you all right? Are you all right??!"

Um, yeah--Julia has never, in my recollection, fallen asleep in the car other than, if we're lucky, for a short nap during multi-hour road trips (and sometimes not even then). If you haven't yet heard the story about how she once stayed awake for 16 hours straight when she was TEN WEEKS OLD, including all the way through a desperate drive around Minneapolis and St. Paul in a failed attempt to get her to nap---well, now you have.

So, maybe I was a little bit justified in my reaction?