Home >> going buggy…
March 17, 2008
In this business of design and illustration there is a lot of variety. No two days are the same. One day it’s a serious newsletter, the next I’m sketching very happy bugs. And my two “associates,” well, you can never predict what they will say or do either… My “assistant” Miika declared today, “I love to get dizzy,” as she twirled around on the back porch. A minute later she said, “this house needs some screws, it’s spinning too much.”
Nathan’s main comments consist of, “Oh, wow,” as he roams around searching to destroy. For the most part, our house is Nathan-proofed, but occasionally, he’ll do the old toilet-paper-pile trick or shred a half a box of kleenexes.
Miika had the flu last week and we fought her high fever for five days straight. Nathan seems to have dodged it so far…we’ll see… Our biggest struggle with Nathan has been getting him to sleep through the night. Sometimes he’ll wake up and scream for an hour and the only way to calm him down is to turn the lights on and read books. At first I thought perhaps he was having adenoid trouble or inner ear problems. He had ear tubes but the ENT took them out a few weeks ago. During our trip to the pediatrician last week for Miika, I asked about Nathan’s sleep trouble. The doctor asked if Nathan woke up at about the same time every night…
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you put him to bed awake or asleep?”
“Asleep, I usually rock him to sleep.”
“Well, it’s behavioral then. Try putting him down awake. He has to learn how to self soothe.”
Well…I tried that a long time ago. Went through the screaming for an hour that reduced to ten minutes over the course of about two weeks. But somewhere along the line, that all went down the tubes.
So we started from scratch last Friday. He cried for about 50 miserable minutes, and finally fell asleep on his own. An hour later when I went to check on him, he was still whimpering and snuffling in his sleep. It was awful making him go through that. But…he slept through the night that night!!! And the next night, he fell asleep almost right away, but woke up around 2:00 a.m. screaming. I checked on him and then left him in his crib to scream for 20 minutes. Last night, he cried for 7 minutes after I put him down at bed time and he slept through until 5:00 a.m. This is all HUGE!!! We’ve had some very difficult nights in the past two years. I think Nathan has slept through the night less than 20 times. About a year ago, we had to take him for a drive at 3:00 a.m. just to calm him down. Fortunately my mother was here while Paul and I went for a 45 minute drive at 2:00 in the morning! I held Nathan illegally in the front seat bundled in a blanket because the rigmarole of the car seat would have defeated the purpose of the drive.
When I’m exhausted in the middle of the night, it’s hard to be compassionate. And when screaming won’t stop, it pushes me to the edge. The relief I feel that perhaps we’ve figured out this sleep business is beyond words. Maybe, just maybe I can look forward to a good night’s rest in the near future. I’ve noticed the wrinkles starting to form around my eyes lately. Is it being 41 or sleepless in Chicago??? Anyway, I’m happy! Sleep is the best medicine for a frazzeled brain.
What I’m really happy about is that it now seems like this sleep trouble has nothing to do with Down syndrome. It’s just Nathan, my son who wants to snuggle with mommy and daddy like any other child.