Sleep perchance

to sleep some more!!!

Liam has never been a great sleeper.  For the first 3 months we couldn't wake him up, and ever since then we've had trouble keeping him asleep.  We first succumbed to alternative sleep solutions when Liam was only 9 months, in the hopes of not losing our ever-loving minds.  The crib became storage for stuffed animals and we started co-sleeping.  And it worked for us, until Liam was 3ish.... when I woke up with a perfect foot-shaped bruise just above my left kidney and we deemed it time to transition into his own bed.

The transition took us almost 2 years before he could get into his bed by himself and fall asleep.

Then we had another bout of night terrors, some sleepwalking and just night after night of interrupted sleep. After 8 years, you kinda expect the "baby" to be sleeping through the night.  This is something that is not covered in any of the parenting books that I've read.

So when we added ADHD medication to the mix this summer, we were a little worried.  One of the main side effects of pretty much ALL the ADHD meds is difficulty sleeping.  And we were right to be worried.  Liam's bedtime was creeping later and later... from 8:00 to 11:00.  He would be in bed but awake, calling down, needing water, books, cuddles or letting his mind wander into worst case scenarios (fire, plague, war....) and causing himself great anxiety.  He was also waking up through the night, so nobody was getting any rest.

Until we discovered the best solution ever!

MELATONIN

Sweet, wonderful melatonin.  How we love thee.  2 little tablets, dissolved under his tongue, and Liam is asking to go to bed within 20 minutes and is out like a light!  He is back to an 8:00 bedtime, and after brushing, reading and a quick cuddle he is out by 8:30.  Which makes for happy mothers and a well rested boy.  And since melatonin is a natural product that your body produces anyway, there are no side effects and it is not addictive.  Win-Win-Win in my mind!

Now if I could stop watching TV shows that are on too late and get to bed earlier myself, I might be well rested too!

Somnambulism

I am a big fan of sleep. In fact, I could do it almost anywhere, any time - no lying down required. When we first became parents, I accepted that my night time sleep would be interrupted, but that it was only going to be for a short while. All babies sleep through the night eventually, right?

Not so with wee Liam. By the time he was 9 months old we abandoned all preconceived sleep notions and brought him into our bed out of desperation. And that worked for awhile.

Then we went through a period of night terrors. There is nothing like being in a deep sleep and having a 30 pound whirling dervish start shrieking in you ear.

Then we transitioned him to his own bed. WOOHOO we thought! We would sleep again. Alas, it took over 2 years to fully transition him to going to sleep and staying asleep in his bed.

He's 7 now. I think we've had about 2 years of fairly decent sleep patterns. 28% of his life so far. Not bad..........

But will it last?

This past Saturday Liam had the treat of sleeping in the spare room bed so that he could watch a movie. With all of his sleep issues, one thing has always remained constant: He will NOT get out of bed unless someone is with him. Most parents think this is wonderful! And it is, till he drops his water bottle and it rolls 2 feet from the bed and he won't get up to get it. So he yells at the top of his lungs Mama! Mammmmaaa! MaaaaaaaaaMMMMMMMaaaaaaaaaaa! till you hear him from the other end of the house and have to drop all you are doing and go upstairs to pick up his water bottle. ( and yes, I could refuse and he could learn and yada, yada, but by that time of night I'm too tired to do battle or listen to him carry on, so I cave)

anyhoo...

On Saturday, I was almost asleep when I heard him get up. Odd. but then I didn't hear anything so I went back to my twillighty stage. Then I heard him come THUNDERING up the stairs. Before I could sit up, he was in our room, curled up in a fetal position in a chair sobbing hysterically.

I went over to him and tried to talk to him when I realized he was still asleep. Not knowing what to do, but needing to do something before I froze to death, I picked him up and put him in our bed between Hilary and I. He sobbed, then laughed like a maniac, then sobbed and thrashed and called out for about 15 minutes before he was out cold in my arms. He remembered nothing of it the next morning, and was very confused on how he ended up in bed with us.

His night terrors had never involved sleep walking before. We hoped this was a one time deal and quickly put it past us.

Till last night.

Again, just as I was falling asleep I heard footsteps on the stairs. Now, we have some pretty fat cats, and they can make an awful lot of noise on the wooden stairs, but this sounded like a lot for even them. So I called out to Liam and he answered from downstairs, clear as could be. By the time I got down there, he was curled up on a kitchen chair, crying and FAST ASLEEP. Great! So I carried 50+ pounds of dead weight back up stairs and had to show him how to get back into bed. Because of course, he sleeps in a bunkbed. And after the bruises I ended up with from having him in our bed on Saturday, I had no desire to try co-sleeping with him again. Luckily he climbed up and went right back to sleep.

I'm hoping this is not the start of a new phase. He scares me enough going up and down the stairs at break neck speeds when he's awake. I'll never get any sleep if I have to keep one ear cocked to listen for him getting out of bed in the middle of the night.

Fractured Sleep

By the time your child is 6 years old, you have come to expect to be able to sleep through the night for the most part. So when your night time slumber is interrupted it seems much harder to recover from then it did 6 years ago when you were getting up every 2 hours EVERY night.

Liam had 2 episodes last night that woke Hilary and I up.

The first happened at 12:39 (for some reason I always have to check the clock for the exact time when I get up). He was crying and calling out for me, and when I realized that he wasn’t stopping, I hauled myself out of bed to go and comfort him. Have you ever noticed that being woken up only a couple of hours into your sleep is so much harder then being woken up at say 4:00 AM? I stumbled, I bumped into the wall, my eyes wouldn’t focus, I fell like I was drunk, but I did eventually find my way to his bedside. I climbed in with him to cuddle up as is my normal habit for soothing nighttime fears. Except this time it wasn’t working.

Once my foggy brain started to wake up I realized that this wasn’t a nightmare but a night terror.

CHARACTERISTICS OF NIGHT TERRORS:

• Your child seems frightened, but cannot be awakened or consoled.
• Your child may sit up in bed, or walk around the room, screaming or talkings enselessly.
• Your child doesn't acknowledge you, his eyes may be open but he seems to stare right through you.
• Objects or persons in the room might be mistaken for dangers.
• Episodes usually last between 10 and 30 minutes.
• Usually occur in children 1 to 8 years old.
• Your child cannot remember the episode in the morning.
• Usually happens within 2 hours of falling asleep.
• Night terrors are harmless and each episode will end on its own.

Last night’s terror lasted nearly 20 minutes, with Liam alternating between sobbing and screaming, all the while thrashing about.

We went through a period of night terrors when Liam was younger, so I was familiar with the symptoms (and thus not freaking out that I couldn’t wake him up). It’s been about 2 years since his last one. The only cause we ever found was they tended to occur on days when he was up and active way past his bedtime. But even then it wasn’t always the case. However, since the summer started, Liam’s bedtime has gotten later (from 7:00 this spring to 9:00 for the summer) and he wasn’t up late last night (he was actually in bed by 8:30). Maybe this is just the accumulation of a sleep deficit rearing its head. Or more likely there is no cause at all.

And like all night terror episodes, it suddenly stopped. He went from screaming and thrashing to rolling over, sucking his thumb and being fully asleep. I waited a moment and made my way back to bed. Of course I can never just fall back to sleep so easily. Hilary had woken up when the screaming started, but once she knew that I was on it, she somehow managed to roll over and go back to sleep. She never even heard me come back to bed.

I did fall back to sleep, unfortunately not for very long.

At 3:18 I heard Liam call out. It sounded like he had to go pee. Our house is a storey and a half, so the upstairs is just 2 bedrooms separated by stairs. It makes for a long trek for night time bathroom needs, so one of us usually goes with Liam to make sure he doesn’t trip and fall and actually finds the toilet and uses it (as opposed to going the wrong way and mistaking the garbage can in the dining room for a toilet)

As I made it to the top of the stairs, so did he. But he was moving FAST. He flew past me into our room and I finally figured out what he was saying. “I don’t want to go to JAIL!” Okay then. I told him that he wasn’t going to jail, he was safe and should go back to sleep. He looked towards me, but mostly through me, mumbled something and bee-lined it back to his bed. By the time I got in there to check on him he was out cold!

I’m pretty sure the jail nightmare comes from having visited the police station this week with camp. For whatever reason, adults feel the need to tease young children with such gems as “better behave while you’re there or they might throw you in jail!” Nice. He says he had fun on the trip, but did not want anyone else to ask him if he had been in the jail, so I’m guessing it came up more then once. He did say that they didn’t get to see the jail on this trip because there were bad people in it and the police officer said that they couldn’t go there because the bad people might say bad words to them. Cause that’s not nightmare inducing for the 5-8 year old crowd.

He woke up this morning as chipper as can be, with no recollection of any of his night time escapades. If only I could be so blissfully unaware and refreshed!