Sleep | Goddess in Progress

Archive for Sleep

Dreams do come true

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (12)· July 30th, 2012

Ellie’s sleep study was scheduled for this past Friday night. I mentioned before that the mere thought of it gave me heart palpitations, so M graciously agreed to be the one to take her. I mean, it’s a shitty gig – the kid’s going to get leads and wires all over the place, and there’s a crappy little cot in the room for the parent to sleep in. And then they send you packing at six in the morning. So, I felt bad that M was taking the bullet on this one. But since I was having anxiety dreams all week about them not letting her come home from the hospital, it seemed I was not the one for the job.

Yeah, about those dreams. Maybe less “anxiety” and more “premonition.”

OH, THAT’S RIGHT. The “nothing to worry about, it’s just a sleep study!” turned out to be less than true. Her sleep study was a catastrophe. Obstructive apnea and oxygen drops so scary, the tech nearly sent her to the emergency room. An ENT consult at 6:00 on a Saturday morning. Admitted to the ICU before noon. Tonsils and adenoids yanked by 4:00. Sleeping in a haze of morphine by 6.

And so, here I am, typing on my iPad and staring down another night sleeping 20 minutes at a stretch in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital room. Trying not to completely freak out.

I can hardly express the visceral reaction of her being admitted to the hospital where we spent so much time when she was a newborn. Of course, any parent would be stressed if their kid was hospitalized. But as the graduate of a 72-day stay, there is a drop in the pit of your stomach that says, “oh god, please, not again.”

Because, having traveled a hospital road before, we know all too well how unpredictable this can be. While her tonsils were large, and adenoids apparently “huge,” and certainly contributing to her sleep issues, we don’t necessarily know if removing them will solve the whole problem. Ellie being Ellie, they’re wondering if there are other neuro or low-muscle-tone factors contributing as well. So she isn’t the kid they’ll send home with painkillers and a case of popsicles. No, they want her here, on monitors and oxygen and eight bajillion checks of her goddamn vital signs in the middle of the night.

Truth is, she’s doing reasonably well right now. Her level of pain after the surgery seems much better today, even in the absence of popsicles and ice cream. She’s sleeping better after a few rough nights, though now with some oxygen to prevent desaturations while she sleeps. And during the day, aside from being tired and bored, she is her usual delightful self. I’m trying to keep her entertained with a lot of YouTube videos of Elmo and puppies.

We’re in wait-and-see mode right now, which is among the shittier modes to be in at the hospital, because it feels so thoroughly unproductive. And frustrating, because I know how conservative the doctors tend to be, how high they set the standards for discharge, especially with a “complex case” like Ellie.

I will say that, now that the immediate panic has passed, not to mention now that I’ve had a full night’s sleep, M and I are a lot more ready and willing to be… proactive about getting her home. I’m not lacing up my boxing gloves just yet, but I am going to push hard against the exceedingly slow and cautious pace of the gigantic hospital. Within the next day or so, I’m going to need to have some pretty compelling reasons why she is still in the hospital, or I might just yank off the monitors and march her out the door.

Try to fucking stop me.

Comments (12)

Categories : Hospital, Illness and Injury, Not good times, Sleep, Toddlers

Tags : adenoids, apnea, Sleep study, tonsils

Nap Lady Redux

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (9)· May 29th, 2012

If there’s anything close to a sure thing when it comes to having more kids, it’s that you will be forced to reconsider something you knew to be 100% right and true the first time around. Among the things Ellie has caused me to … moderate my views on, the biggest is my entire concept of sleep schedules.

Oh, was I a nut for schedules when my big kids were babies and toddlers. Naptime is naptime, come hell or high water. I would schedule everything around naptime, nothing would be permitted to interfere. I carefully crafted the transition from two naps to one, and hung onto the morning nap for as long as I possibly could. It was literally YEARS before I knowingly and purposefully allowed them to skip the afternoon nap. They would both go to bed for a nap, together, at the same time each and every day.

And, in my defense, it worked for us. My kids did well with the predictability, were well-rested and happy when they got that sleep every day. And frankly, with twins, I think it’s a matter of survival to have that kind of synchronization.

And then came Ellie.

Truth be told, she has nearly always been a very good sleeper. With the exception of the few weeks of to-swaddle-or-not limbo, she has required virtually zero intervention to get to sleep, and slept through the night consistently and of her own volition as soon as we got over the swaddle nonsense at 3.5 months. Yes, I am well aware of how lucky we are.

But she has completely defied my previous notions of what a nap schedule should look like at any age. She really never went through that phase of needing a third nap (big kids took a third catnap with some regularity until 8 months). She always took a late and short morning nap (I had always thought that first nap was relatively early in the morning and quite reliable). At 13-14 months, she pretty abruptly and decisively dropped the morning nap altogether (big kids did it at 17 months with a long and protracted transition). And as if that weren’t enough, she is already at that point where, if her afternoon nap goes longer than 1.5-2 hours, she’ll be awake until nearly 10PM (a trick my big kids didn’t pull until after age 4).

More than anything, I find myself more relaxed and willing to follow her lead than I was with the big kids. Ellie, herself, is much more flexible than they were at this age, whether by temperament or by virtue of being the third kid, I don’t know. But if she seems tired earlier than usual? Sure, put her down early! Too-short nap today? Oh well, we’ll survive. The fact that she already seems like she’ll drop the nap a few YEARS earlier than her brother and sister did? Whatevs.

So, the crazy nap lady is eating some of her own words these days. The way Ellie sleeps is nothing short of shocking to the Me of three years ago. But I guess that’s how it goes. Think you know EVERYTHING about being a parent? Go ahead, have another kid. I dare you.

Comments (9)

Categories : Sleep

Tags : Naps

Ellie, Six Months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· August 25th, 2011

Half a year? Honestly? Six months, already?

Well, in truth, February 25 feels like it was about three lifetimes ago. And of that six months, she’s only been at home for three and a half, so I suppose it’s understandable that I feel a little confused as to how we got here.

But here, indeed, we are. Six months old, my sweet Ellie Bear.

She is really a very happy baby, very much of the time. Her smiles have gone from few and fleeting to freely shared with all. So sweet, watching her face light up when she sees me or M or Daniel or Becca. Even better, she’s really starting to laugh. Again, like smiling, I first thought I heard her chuckle about six weeks ago. But it was so brief (just a single “heh”) and so infrequent, I wasn’t even completely sure that’s what it was. But now, with a little hard work and some silly faces, you can actually draw out some real giggles. She’s also pretty talkative, sometimes a sweet “aaahhh,” sometimes a gutteral growl. But you can always tell if it’s a happy sound or a grumpy one.

With the help of twice-weekly physical therapy (one through the hospital and one at home through Early Intervention), she’s making really nice strides in strength and motor skills. She’s reaching and grabbing more (especially her lovey or anything fabric), holding her head much more steady, and I’ve noticed a lot more strength in her core and legs. I feel like, now, I can look at her and say “yes, she’s going to sit on her own at some point.” It won’t be next week, but she’ll get there. For that, I am very glad.

She has been, all told, a very good sleeper. She’s been consistently sleeping through the night since about four months. Well, sometimes I think she’s awake, but she’s quiet and/or happy and doesn’t require anything from us to go back to sleep. So, close enough. I’ve been playing pretty fast and loose with her daytime sleep, often getting just catnaps in the morning and then a good long nap in the afternoon. It had been working well until a few days ago, and now I think I’m starting to pay the price for the lack of morning sleep. She’s having a harder time settling for that long afternoon nap, and then totally falls apart by bedtime. Bedtime itself is, usually, pretty good. We got into the habit of doing a bath every other night instead of every night, mostly because she screamed bloody murder every time. But now that we’ve got her nasty recurring diaper rash under control, she’s much happier in the tub. Go figure.

She has teeth. OH MY GOD does she have teeth. Four so far, with at least two more clearly visible that will probably be through in the next week or two. For the record, Daniel got his first tooth on his six-month birthday, and Rebecca didn’t get one for another two months after that. RI-GOD-DAMN-DICULOUS, especially for a baby who doesn’t eat.

Oh, right. The eating/feeding thing. It blows. The “practice” with the bottle is going absolutely nowhere. She used to sometimes try to chew on it, but now she just screws up her face and turns away. I’ll talk to our speech pathologist soon (she’s the one guiding our feeding therapy stuff) and we will probably just go for purees on a spoon in the near future, but no idea how that’ll go. In the meantime, the g-tube feeding stuff is going fine and is relatively easy and portable. But, yeah. No noticeable progress there, and the gag reflex is as bad as it ever was.

That said, she’s growing just fine. Well, sorta. She’s packing on the pounds like nobody’s business (15lb7oz/44th percentile at her checkup this morning), but is still pretty short (24″, which was probably generous, around the 5th percentile). We’re working with a nutritionist to gradually tweak her formula intake to try to even those two things out.

She has been really great this summer, tolerating a lot of being dragged around with relative ease. The time has clearly come for me to get serious about planning and respecting her naps, but all in all she has done amazingly well between the endless doctor’s appointments and following along with the big kids and their activities. While she might not be THE most easygoing baby in the world (see: stroller and carseat aversion that, while improved, is not gone), she really has been great. One of the things I’m looking forward to about the big kids going back to school is the chance to actually focus on her a little more, instead of just dragging her to gymnastics.

There you have it, snapshot of my little girl at half a year old. Time has alternately flown and dragged, but mostly flown. I know I’m going to blink and she’ll be a year old, and two, and four, and eighteen. Unbelievable.

Comments (7)

Categories : Birthdays, Child Development, Infants, Sleep

Tags : feeding therapy, g-tube, Gross motor, low tone

Four Months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (15)· June 25th, 2011

Ellie is now four months old. A few more weeks and she will have been home longer than she was in the hospital. Even though it was only a month and a half ago, I still look back and can’t believe we actually were there that long. Oh well, may it drift farther and farther away in my memory…

She is up to 13 pounds, 38th percentile for her age. Length, however, is 22.5″, which is only the 4th percentile. She’s a short little thing.

While I’d hesitate to call it a schedule, we seem to have a somewhat predictable sleep routine. Since we are generally out-and-about in the morning, she’ll take catnaps here or there. She’ll doze off in her bouncy seat or on the playmat, or sleep for a little bit while we’re in the car. After we get home for lunch, however, she’ll usually go to bed in her own room a little before her big brother and sister, and will sleep away the entire afternoon. Along the lines of 1-5PM. It’s unbelievable. And even after that marathon nap, she’s very much ready to go to bed for the night by 7. And then, believe it or not, she is pretty much sleeping 11-12 hours straight. Not every single night, and sometimes she’s awake but quiet (whatever, if it doesn’t require action from me, it totally counts as sleeping through). But she literally went from one night being awake every hour or so, to the next night sleeping 12 hours. Unswaddled, for sure.

Ellie is NOT a fan of her carseat. She doesn’t necessarily protest from the first moment you put her in it, and she will often fall asleep once the car starts moving. But if I dare stop to pick up my latte at the Starbucks drive-thru, I will hear her thoughts on the matter. NOT PLEASED. My new method for running errands or hanging out at the park is to put her in the Ergo instead of bothering with the carseat and stroller. Despite the fact that it’s summer and she is a very warm, sweaty baby to begin with, the Ergo seems to be much more acceptable than the carseat.

She is getting a little steadier with head control, and is starting to grab and hold onto things, though not reaching for them. She’s very responsive to people, and the smiles are a little easier to come by, but no laughing yet. We’re working on a regular bedtime routine, and she’s much happier in the bath now that I’ve gotten the temperature right (and am no longer attempting to poach her). She likes her bouncy seat, especially with the buzzing vibration turned on, but would rather not be left anywhere for too long. She is most likely to make happy sounds with her voice when first waking up from a nice long nap, or when you set her down. Once you’ve picked her up, she has less to say. She needs her space, apparently.

She is adored by both of her siblings. Rebecca always wants to help take care of her, and keeps asking when Ellie will be old enough to share a room with her. Daniel’s level of affection never ceases to astound me. While he’s still a typical, wild four-year-old boy who needs to be a little more careful around the baby, he truly cannot get enough of her. It’s a constant stream of hugs, kisses, and a ridiculous-sounding echo of baby talk. I could not have asked for a better reaction/transition from my big kids.

Comments (15)

Categories : Birthdays, Child Development, Infants, Sleep

To swaddle, or not to swaddle

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· June 5th, 2011

I just cannot figure out what this kid needs.

Ellie alternates between being a really solid sleeper and a really horrible one. Sometimes she’ll fall asleep, totally on her own, unswaddled. Sometimes she’ll sleep comfortably, for hours, all wrapped up.

And then, she doesn’t. The hands will flail and get so crazy, whipping her up into an overtired frenzy. She wants her hands in her mouth, but then she’ll gag herself on them. She yanks on her ear, grabs handfuls of hair, pokes herself in the eye, and generally seems like she’s trying to claw her own face off. But then the swaddle makes her SO MAD. She can wiggle her arms out of any standard swaddle in seconds, whether pulled tight with a big muslin blanket or velcro-ed in with a sleep sack. And even the famed uber-swaddle is a no-go. She literally spends all night furiously raging against it, and eventually manages to get an arm out. And then the face-clawing begins anew.

M and I spend the whole night trying to find the sweet spot. If she’s fighting the swaddle, sometimes you’ll unwrap her and she’ll pass out in under a minute. If she’s making herself crazy with unruly arms, sometimes you can swaddle her and she calms right down. You can do the bouncing and shushing thing from Happiest Baby on the Block and it will soothe the savage beast, or you can rock her and it’s like you’re pouring gas on the fire. And either way, 20 or 45 or 90 minutes later, she’s awake and you have to take yet another guess as to what will work this time.

It’s these things that make me feel like a rookie all over again. I’m at a loss to figure out how to get her to sleep better (we’ve got a day/night organization problem, as well). I’m forever giving people advice about sleep, but here I am, struggling like anyone else. Sure, the benefit of experience has me more likely to sit and wait to intervene, to see if she’ll settle herself instead of further revving her engine by picking her up too quickly. But still, I feel clueless much of the time. As soon as I think I might have figured out a trick, the next time it doesn’t work.

Some of our unique Ellie circumstances don’t help. While she’s over three months old, I’ve only had her home for four weeks. My knowledge of her cues and needs is still in the early stages. The fact that she is fed via g-tube takes feeding and hunger out of the sleep equation in a very strange way. Overnight, for instance, she is fed continuously at a very slow rate. So she’s neither hungry nor full, and doesn’t need to wake up to eat. But I also can’t use bottle- or breastfeeding as a soothing technique.

I know she’s too young to try to push a true nap schedule, or to do any real cry-it-out sleep training. I know I need to work on implementing a consistent bedtime routine. I can’t decide whether to limit her daytime sleep – while I’m a staunch believer in “sleep begets sleep,” sometimes she takes epic afternoon naps lasting 3-4 hours, and I wonder if that’s interfering with nighttime sleep.

Leave it to a new baby to make a know-it-all mom of twins feel like a brand-new rookie all over again.

Comments (11)

Categories : Infants, Sleep

Tags : Swaddling

On Jet Lag and Re-Entry

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (1)· November 28th, 2010

Aside from surviving the flights, my other major concern about taking two three-year-olds to Hawaii was, obviously, jet lag.

While we travel quite frequently with our kids, we generally either stay in our own time zone (Florida) or go a single hour earlier (Chicago). The only time we’ve dealt with any significant time change was our trip to California when they were only 7 months old. Over the course of our brief four-day trip, they didn’t adjust to Pacific Time AT ALL, and we essentially started each day at about 3 or 4AM. Charming.

With that being my only precedent, I was nervous about the 5-hour time difference between Boston and Honolulu. No adjustment at all would have my kids awake for the day by 2:30AM. Obviously, that would be entirely unacceptable. Thankfully, however, 3-year-olds are a hell of a lot more adaptable than 7-month-olds.

When we arrived at our rental house, it was around 5:30PM local time, so after 10:30 Eastern Time. My kids had been up since before 5:00AM, with only one pathetic nap between the two of them. Daniel passed out cold on the drive from the airport, and for the second time in his life, actually transferred inside and stayed asleep. For the rest of the night. I managed to change him out of his travel clothes and get a Pull-Up on him, and when I set him into his bed, he just rolled over and smiled.

Rebecca went to bed shortly thereafter, and thankfully I had thought ahead and packed our friend, the Good Nite Lite. I set it to “wake up” at 5:00AM, local time. And while we were all awake before it turned yellow, at least it was dark out and the light was blue, and we were able to convince the kids to stay pretty quiet and rest in bed (we shared a room, alas) until it turned yellow. We weren’t the only ones in the house up at that hour, of course, so we all took advantage of being wide awake and about 100 yards from the beach and went to watch the sunrise. (I even let M hold my camera for a minute…)

After that, it honestly wasn’t bad at all. Being up early, plus plenty of activity and sunshine, meant both kids took an awfully good nap nearly every day. The nap enabled them to stay up to a normal bedtime, and I bumped the Good Nite Lite to 6:00AM for the rest of the trip. By about 5 or 6 days in, they even slept quite a bit past when it turned yellow. Hooray!

My pregnant and jet-lagged ass, on the other hand, was completely exhausted and crashed HARD at about 8:30 every night. Ah well.

However, I have heard from a number of people that West-to-East is about a million times worse as far as jet lag goes, and unfortunately, that has proven true for us.

Obviously, travel day was all over the place. Barely slept on the red-eye, “naps” were here there and everywhere the day we got home. Both kids were exhausted and losing their minds by 6:00PM, so we put them to bed. I think I only lasted another hour or two before I crashed, too. Unfortunately, we were ALL awake from about 10:30PM to 1:00AM. It was so ridiculous, we ended up putting on a TV show for the kids at midnight.

Yes, they “slept in” the next day, but then what do you do? Nap? No nap? Plus, Daniel had picked up a nasty cold and was that much more exhausted from being sick. And me? Completely bone-tired. We ended up trying a no-nap day for the kids (I may have put on a movie so I could grab a nap, myself), in the hopes of getting them tired enough for bedtime, but it didn’t work. Another night of being wide awake at 11:00PM, though at least it wasn’t as long this time.

Add to all of that insanity the fact that we’re on a bit of a let-down from leaving a great vacation, it’s a holiday week, the kids haven’t been to preschool in over two weeks… basically, it was a nightmare of re-entry. No routine, no schedule. Getting them up and to school would have been hard, but at least it might have forced us back into normalcy. What actually happened is that we didn’t get back to near-normal sleep until Saturday (got home Monday), and behavior has steadily deteriorated as they are simply bored.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for them to go back to school on Monday morning.

Could we have made the adjustment back to reality any easier? Who knows. I think my attempts at skipping the nap to get them tired enough for bedtime (the challenge of the West-to-East transition) backfired, and I would have been better off with a mid-afternoon nap and a late-ish bedtime. And had we not been sick and had it not been a holiday week, I think making ourselves get up and go to school in the morning would have been a good thing. But regardless, it took a solid 5-6 days to get adjusted back to our home time.

Was it worth it? Hell yes. The trip itself was great, and I’ll talk more about it in another post. But re-entry has been absolutely brutal.

Comments (1)

Categories : Behavior, Preschoolers, Sleep, Travel

Tags : Hawai'i, jet lag

Sad and Glad and Bad

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· October 21st, 2010

I did something rather out of character today.

I deliberately skipped the nap for both kids.

I know, I know. Pick your jaws up off the floor. But I have come to a few very, very sad realizations.

1. My kids can handle a day without a nap. Not every time, of course. But today, along with some other days we’ve had, they have gotten through more or less until bedtime without a complete meltdown.

2. On the days that they do nap (which is still every day for Rebecca, maybe 3-5 times a week for Daniel), it takes them much longer to fall asleep at night. Long gone are the days of “sleep begets sleep” that I swore by in the infant days, when a better nap meant even better overnight sleep. Nope, no more. This has been the case for a while, but it hasn’t been problematic until recently, when the miscellaneous requests for water, backrubs, rearranged blankets, and the like, have gotten a bit out of hand. Not total chaos, but definitely prolonged stalling. There are nights when one or both of them is still awake at 9:30 or even 10, which is entirely too late, even if they are staying in their rooms. The days with no nap, however? Asleep within minutes of finishing the final song.

Tonight, I really needed them to fall asleep right away. I couldn’t risk marathon naps from either of them this afternoon. So, instead of going home after school, we went to the mall for lunch and playing. Came home and watched a TV show. Hung out and played. Rebecca briefly talked about being sleepy as we left the mall, but stayed awake in the car and seemed to catch a second wind after a little Super Why. I never spoke of napping or the skipping thereof, I just kind of pretended it wasn’t happening. I didn’t want to even introduce it as a topic of conversation. We had an early-ish dinner, and early-ish bedtime, and that was that. They were fine.

Sad and Glad, all at the same time.

Sad to realize that the afternoon nap is, indeed, on its way out for good. This is a huge bummer. While the kids did fine this afternoon, I was the one getting kind of cranky and wanting that break. Glad, of course, because at least they were able to handle it without turning into total beasts by 4PM.

Nearing the end of an era. Dammit.

Comments (11)

Categories : Behavior, Preschoolers, Sleep

I’m not sure it’s progress

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (6)· July 1st, 2010

We had a rough morning. Daniel seemed to sleep a little better last night (after a complete meltdown at bedtime and resulting night terror about two hours later), but still woke up in a horrid mood and had two time-outs before even going downstairs. I could have told him we were having ice cream for breakfast and he would have pitched a fit. He pulled it together for swim class, but again protested going down for nap. Thankfully, FINALLY, he took one today. Three cheers for the new blackout shade.

Went up to get him from nap, he took a solid 2+ hours. Walk in, strange smell. Diaper in hand.

“Daniel, why did you take off your diaper?”

“Because I had to pee.”

“Where did you pee?”

“In my bed.”

Indeed. The whole bed was completely soaked. The diaper was dry as a bone.

What could I even do? The pee was cold, the incident had passed. The morning, the week, had been so intensely frustrating and draining, I had nothing left in the tank. If I got upset about this, it was clear I was going to straight-up flip my lid, possibly burst into tears. So I complimented him on knowing that he needed to pee, and suggested that the next time he felt that way, he could just go to the bathroom across the hall. I mean, at least he recognized he needed to go?

Good lord.

Comments (6)

Categories : Behavior, Preschoolers, Sleep, Toddlers

Tags : nap strike, potty training

I’m right. Not that it matters.

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (26)· June 28th, 2010

You could make the argument that my biggest fear about switching to beds has come true. But, to be completely honest, the writing was on the wall for several weeks prior. I can’t blame the bed.

Daniel is trying to drop his nap.

It’s a highly intentional act, consistent in tone to other behavior/control/defiance issues we’re dealing with. Over the course of the last week, in particular, he has become very conscious of the fact that he can control whether or not he goes to sleep at naptime. For the first time in two and a half years, he is seriously protesting taking a nap. “I’m not tired.” “I don’t need to sleep.” “I don’t want to take a rest.” “I’m all out of energy to sleep.” “My yawn says that it’s time to play outside.”

It’s a nap shitstorm over here. You’ll excuse the profanity, and understand that I’m actually showing a lot of restraint right now. Between the skipped naps, the heat and humidity, and the lack of central air conditioning, the only words I actually want to speak are of the four-letter variety. I’m trying to hold it together in front of the kids, but with only moderate success.

Every day, I wonder how bad it’s going to be. If he outright skips the nap, he can seem somewhat agreeable for a little while. But the truth is that he’s a ragged edge, just waiting to snag on something and completely lose it. That nearly always happens by dinnertime.

If he messes around for an hour and a half (or two hours, OMFG), and then falls asleep, I end up having to wake him around 4:30, just so he’ll have some chance of going back to sleep at bedtime. That is, universally, a nightmare. He’s nothing short of horrid when you wake him up. Hysterical sobbing, can’t listen to anything, pitches a fit about everything. A bad nap is actually worse than no nap at all.

And once in what seems like a blue moon, he goes up there and falls asleep within 30-45 minutes, takes a nice two-hour nap, and is the delightful child that is hiding under the nap-beast I see most days.

When I talk to people about the difficulty we’re having, it’s amazing to me how many people leap to the conclusion that it must be time to give up the nap. To which I would like to say, HELL TO THE MOTHERFUCKING NO. (sorry, couldn’t keep that one in.)

Yes, maybe the nap is in the beginning stages of phasing out. It has to happen sometime. I have had my moments where I wonder if it’s time.

But then I watch the behavior. Only on the days when he has a “normal” nap is he the happy, delightful version of himself for any extended period of time. Yes, that sometimes means he sings for a while at night, but I’ll take it if he’s actually happy and friendly during his waking hours. Sometimes he fools you, holding it together pretty darn well when he skips the nap. But more often than not, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Today, I thought I was a shoo-in. Took them swimming for over an hour, which is usually guaranteed to wear them out. Plus, it’s quite hot, which always makes me more sleepy. Put them down right on time (sometimes nap gets pushed late, and though he falls asleep a little sooner, it’s the messed-up-nap shitstorm as described above). Yeah. Daniel didn’t sleep AT ALL, and Rebecca (who often takes herself up for naptime) only slept an hour. KILL ME.

For those who say he’s just not tired? Guess what he did for the first time in MONTHS when we were coming back from the mall (woo, air conditioning)? Fell asleep in the car. And just for some added fun, peed through his shorts (screw you, potty training).

I’m not sure there’s much of a solution to this one. I can set up rules and boundaries for that time I designate as “naptime,” but I cannot force him to go to sleep. (Apparently using tranquilizers on toddlers is “frowned upon.”) I know that I’m right. I know that, most days, he absolutely does need that nap. But being right isn’t worth much at the moment. It doesn’t get us any closer to a well-rested child. Unfortunately, I think I just have to wait this one out.

In the meantime, I’m not exactly the picture of maternal patience. As all of my mom friends know, the kid not napping is a major source of stress and barrier to getting things accomplished. When he’s up there messing around, I feel like I can’t even go upstairs. Can’t take a shower, can’t mess around on my sewing machine. Can’t even sit downstairs and turn on the TV at an audible volume, because he insists on turning off his white noise machine.

Oof. Can a girl get a frosty beverage over here? Stat?

Comments (26)

Categories : Preschoolers, Sleep, Toddlers

Tags : dropping the nap, fighting the nap

When you dream

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (8)· March 25th, 2010

I always wondered how young babies are when they start to dream. Do they always, from day one? Is it later, when they start to become more aware? Who knows.

I have long suspected Rebecca is a vivid dreamer. She’s a restless sleeper, and it’s not uncommon for her to wake in the middle of the night, seemingly distraught and in need of a pat on the back. But she’s usually still sleepy enough that she doesn’t say much about what’s bothering her and goes right back to sleep.

Daniel, on the other hand, sleeps like the dead. Sometimes, when I go in to check on them before I go to bed, I have to poke him so he’ll move enough for me to know he’s still breathing.

He woke up crying late last night, very uncharacteristic. I went in to check on him.

“Mommy, I’m so sad! I’m weawwy weawwy sad!”

“Oh, buddy, why are you sad?”

“I’m so sad, because they took all the phones!”

A hug and some vague reassurance about the phones, and back to sleep he went. As did I, with no more doubt about whether toddlers dream.

Comments (8)

Categories : Sleep, Toddlers

Tags : dreams, imagination, nightmares

Archive for Sleep

Dreams do come true

Nap Lady Redux

Ellie, Six Months

Four Months

To swaddle, or not to swaddle

On Jet Lag and Re-Entry

Sad and Glad and Bad

I’m not sure it’s progress

I’m right. Not that it matters.

When you dream

Got to pay the bills!

Archives

Search

Grab My Button

NaBloPoMo – November 2011