You're welcome to leave nasty comments about my parenting below

The fire alarm went off at 12:30 a.m. today, reminding me of the last time that ungodly noise ripped through our hallway and into our apartment, waking us up in the middle of the night and causing one real dilemma: we had to wake our sleeping child.

Only a parent of a child who had difficulty sleeping through the night for the entire first year of his life will understand why the number one thought on our minds was not the fact that our apartment, which holds every single item we own, might be incinerated in a matter of moments. Or that we might have to hoist our little Ethan out of our second-story window with bedsheets if the fire got out of hand. No, the most important question was whether or not we dared wake the child and risk staying up the rest of the night with him.

Last time we decided to take him out to see those firetrucks - mainly because there were trace amounts of smoke in the hallway.

Last night, however, was a different story. At the sound of the alarm, I jumped out of bed, pulled some clothes and shoes on, grabbed my phone and walked out the door, leaving my son and husband slumbering in their beds. After joining the rest of the pajama-clad residents in the street, one of my neighbors gawked at me when I told her I had left my child inside. I called Ryan to tell him there was no smoke billowing out of the windows. He hung up on me.

The firetrucks arrived and after sauntering in and out of the building for a few minutes the firefighters told us to go back to our apartments and go to sleep. Only we couldn't, because they had difficulty turning the alarm off. Amazingly (and sort of ironically), Ethan slept through all the ringing. And when I finally did get under my covers, I was glad I didn't wake him up.

Throughout today though, I have wondered if I was being cavalier with my son's life for a little extra sleep. What would you have done?