Solid Sleep - Wherefore Art Thou? Not in the ER!

We have been having sleep issues in our house for four or five months now. I keep telling myself, "This, too, shall pass!" After all, my ES was a horrible sleeper for the first five years of his life (up every night for some reason or other). The first year was the hardest. He battled continuous ear infections (and now that I have had one of those, I more fully understand his temperament back then). He still has difficulty falling to sleep many nights and seems to require less sleep than his peers, but he rarely wakes me in the night.

I suppose the really difficult thing is that both of my younger boys have been fairly good sleepers in the past. When I had my MS, it was like a dream come true. He slept four hours solid the first night home and within a few weeks was sleeping at least six hours straight most nights. I couldn't believe that he slept 12 hours a night. My disbelief was almost equivalent to the disbelief I had felt years earlier when others had given me that sage advice "sleep when your baby sleeps." To that, I would have said, "You mean babies SLEEP? Mine doesn't. Not for more than a half hour at a time."

And my YS had settled into a fairly good pattern as well. He used to go down easily, stayed asleep and when he did whimper, would merely roll over after a few moments and fall back asleep. I kept his crib out in a front room for longer than I expected, just because I didn't want to disrupt the good sleep patterns we had all established.

I don't know what shifted in December, but there was definitely a clear shift. Perhaps it was brought on by illness. I don't really remember. But I know that by Christmas we were concerned about travelling, for fear the little boys would wake frequently in the night and bother others.

Shortly after Christmas, my husband began sleeping in the room off our garage because the boys were waking him so much that he couldn't function well at work. Both my 3 year old and my 1 year old now wake two to three times a night. Sometimes, they are consoled with a quick pat and fall back to sleep. But most of the time, they want to be rocked or continue to wake repeatedly every half hour.

For the toddler, I tried stickers. Every time he sleeps through the night and doesn't wake me for any reason, he receives a sticker on a good behavior chart. I haven't found that this works consistently. I'd say he gets a sticker two nights out of every seven.

Now that I have moved the crib into my toddler's room, I probably respond more often to the baby. But lots of times, I still let him whimper for a good ten minutes before I get up to respond. The thing is, these sleep interruptions are killing me. The last time I slept through the night solidly, I had taken Nyquil for a cold and informed my hubby that he would have to be available for those two little guys because I would be dead to the world.

So, thank goodness for those TWO NAPS on Friday! I know I was up several times Friday night (the baby was up at one point for 45 minutes straight and would not go back to sleep). My toddler was fighting a cold, so I attributed his disruptions to difficulty breathing and ran the vaporizer. By Saturday morning, both YS and I were also coughing throughout the day.

After our lovely date night, and a bit of blogging, I headed to bed around 1 a.m. At 1:20, I got up because I remembered that I had promised to wash MS's Spiderman outfit and it was still soaking in the rinse water. At 1:45 a.m., YS began to cry. I tried to ignore it, but it sounded like it was accompanied by a suspiciously familiar bark.

Yes, we headed to the ER, AGAIN. Yes, I got there in 15 minutes, AGAIN. Yes, since this is my fourth visit to the ER in three months, they have begun to recognize me (This morning, my ES said rather cheekily, "So, now you can say that somebody knows you around here!" - I wouldn't call ER nurses in a hospital a half hour away "around here"!).

The exact same doctor who treated the baby last month, said "Croup. Didn't I admit him last month for the same thing? You know the routine. We'll give him a breathing treatment. This time, since he's not as bad, an oral steroid (instead of a shot) and then another chest x-ray, and we should have you out of here in about an hour." Well, it wasn't an hour, but it was better than being admitted for a day of observation (and how fortunate that, again, this happened during the weekend).

The breathing treatment was far more difficult this time around. Doctors and nurses all seemed to be the same as our visit a month ago - too bad we couldn't have gotten the same breathing technician. This guy was old and gruff and came in booming my baby's name (which I think made the baby a bit leery to begin with). Next, he tried a Donald Duck voice which sent the little guy into hysterics of crying (not exactly beneficial for someone having difficulty breathing). Finally, throughout the treatment he insisted on holding my baby's head in place to ensure that the inhalation mask stayed in front of his nostrils. He kept saying, "S-----, I wouldn't have to hold you if you would just stay still." I kept thinking, "Dude, he would just stay still, if you would back off and let me handle this." Instead, I held my little guy close and stroked his head, while holding the mask to his face and quietly reminding him, "You can do this ... You've done it before. Momma's right here."

After the steroid and x-ray and an hour of waiting, the baby fell asleep in my arms. We were there for two and half hours and not a wink for me. I tried. I did. Sadly, when I returned home my hubby was up with news that he had never been able to fall back to sleep either. I did get a fat nap with both little guys this afternoon, thank goodness.

The good afternoon naps come with a price, though. At 10:30 my MS was still not asleep, and I was supposed to head to the store to pick up milk and a few other items. Finally, I just lugged him to the store with me. Of course, when I finally got him into bed and headed to the kitchen to put away the milk, my MS proceeded to scream for me (he needed his covers on him - nope, I'm sure he couldn't have managed that himself) and woke the baby. Yeehah!

So, now I head off for my nightly slumber. If I were Chloe, I would write an eloquent letter addressed to sleep: "Dear sleep: If you knew how much I wanted to spend time with you, you would visit more often." (And, yes, I have considered that blogging might be interfering somewhat with my relationship with sleep, but I desire sanity, too.) Instead, I have ordered the book Good Night, Sleep Tight at Catherine's suggestion. I am desperately hoping to discover the secrets of sound circadean rhythms, so my husband can come back to sleeping in our room, we can all get a good night's sleep and I can still find time to blog.