Parents stumble back to bed. I can't go back to sleep. Parent walks him back to his room, lies down with him, falls back into fitful sleep. Beside snoozing parent, oldest boy tosses restively. Remaining parent heads into nursery to retrieve all five missing pacifiers from behind crib, rocks angry baby till calm once more, retrieves missing co-parent from oldest son's bed, stumbles back to bed.
Parents rise to begin effort of stumbling through another day.
As a point of honor, I ought to mention that the parent who's doing most of this rising during the night is not me. I get up with the children about twice for every five times my husband does. We arrived at this nighttime division of labor for the simple reason that my untroubled husband is capable of falling back to sleep instantly, no matter how many times he is awakened during a night. But like my oldest son, after I'm rousted from a sound sleep, I'm wide awake for the next hour or two. I haven't had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep since 1991.