Monday, January 12, 2009
I'm Mad Today
Maybe it's a normal thing. I don't know. I don't want to be angry with Marshall. It's not his fault he can't sleep through the night. I'm just SO BURNED OUT!! He has bad dreams constantly EVERY SINGLE NIGHT! When will it stop? What will help? There is no end in sight. I've always had a goal to go by. Something to keep me going. When he was first home from the NICU, I told myself, "I can make it to 6 months". The doctor thought his constant fussiness and lack of sleep was due to colic. It didn't improve at 6 months. I figured I'd wait for 6 months ADJUSTED age. Yeah, that came and went with no change. We're at four years now. Well, four years and nearly 3 months. I'm exhausted. I'm so SICK of bedtime woes. I'm tired of my child waking up so many times during the night. He's not always coherent but he cries, I wake up, have to check on him, then I try to go back to sleep. Sometimes I can't go back to sleep right away so I lay there a while. Then just as I finally fall back asleep, he cries again. I tell him he's safe. There's no bad guys. I checked his room. I tell him I looked under the bed (I check it all again) and there's nothing there. I check the closet, behind the doors, in the hallway and report back that everything is fine and he's safe. He has his rope lights on his bunk bed (which he LOVES). He has music playing in his room all night. He has a cricket sound machine playing all night. Yet, he still wakes up. He still wants someone in there. If I refuse to stay, he cries and cries even more and wakes up Nathan. If I ignore him, he gets even more scared. I'm burned out. When will it end? When will he sleep? I think I need to get out more often. I'm gonna go crazy.
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7 comments:
You have a right to be mad. I too get so frustrated at the lack of sleep and waking up in the night at FOUR years old! We take Melatonin to get to sleep but there's got to be something out there that will keep him asleep. Anybody heard of anything?
He's on Risperdal for anger, which also has a nice side effect of making him hungry and sleepy. When we up the dose, we notice he eats better. He also takes Clonidine which we use specifically for sleep, and 3 mg of Melatonin. I think the next step is going to be trying to ease the anxiety but he's already on so many meds that I worry. It's so hard to be a parent!!!
Now earlier you said that you can't do a sleep study because he won't sleep, is that still the problem? I mean, JT wouldn't sleep though the night either and it was so hard to be a happy mom when you are so tired you could cry. Without the sleep study we would still be there.
We've had so many sleep studies. He still has moderate sleep apnea but he won't tolerate CPAP. He had his tonsils and adenoids removed when he was like 20 mo. old. SO, I guess the only thing to do is wait for him to be able to tolerate CPAP. I don't know what else to do.
Just today I was sitting here.. almost falling asleep while reading with my 6 yr old and thought, maybe I will go on Thru the Tulips to see if anyone else is having probs with their kids sleeping. Not that it makes any of us any better, I was so glad to see this post today. My little one is only 19mos, but wakes up about every 2 hours. He is wearing me out! He doesn't seem to need anything, and if he was in a room alone, I wouldn't even go in there. But he starts getting too noisy for my poor 4 yr old in there, so I get him out of there so he can sleep. But the few times I have been so wiped out I let him go becuase he wasn't crying, he would stay awake for 2 hours! I feel all your pain with the lack of sleep. I wish there was something we could do. When did any of you start meds for your kids?
Melissa,
Mine used to do that before he had his tonsils and adenoids removed. He had such severe sleep apnea that he had to have surgery a week after we got his sleep study results back. We went through exactly what you're describing. We even had to bring our older son into our room and make a bed for him on our floor. I was so relieved when I took him to the sleep doctor and she said it wasn't my fault. My pediatrician actually told us we were bad parents because we didn't ignore him when he woke up all the time at night. Turns out he woke up because HE COULDN'T BREATHE!!!!
Do you have someone that can come over for few hours so you can take a nap? I know that it is hard for me to leave Bree with someone because she has a hard time and it can be diffiult for people to understand that she can not be cared for the same way was my other kids. That make is hard for me to leave her, but I find that if someone can come over while I am there, it helps. And I can usually get a much needed nap. As you are in need of one now!
I hate trying to function and get through somedays and on top of that trying to do it on 0 hours of sleep. I pray it all works out soon!
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