The Haunting

Sleeping problems solved? After months and months and months of trying everything we could think to try, we FINALLY solved the sleeping issues we were having with LB. I mean maybe. Possibly. Knock on wood. Hopefully. I mean we were a week away from having an exorcist voodoo shaman witch-doctor rabbi dance around the house, and shake sticks, splash water, and chant curses to chase the "ghosts" out of LB's room. These pesky ghosts that keep waking him up, and encouraging him to aimlessly wander around the house. I mean it had come to that, we started spooking ourselves into considering that there were actual ghosts hanging out in his room at night and playing with him. This theory was largely born from the fact that late at night when I would stay up and write, I would hear shuffling around, and then quiet giggles would start that would eventually erupt into this...

I would sneak into his room and it would be like the needle scratching across the record and LB would sit up, look at me completely dead pan and stoic like, "Dude! What? I was having fun. Close the Fucking Door." and when i would leave the giggling would start right back up. Even louder. OH so now I'm the asshole? LB and his ghost buddies are in there making fun of me now?

It turns out that one of the problems we will be facing in our lives with LB is an ongoing sleep battle that can last a lifetime. His melatonin levels are reversed, and the older he gets the more prone he will be to tire and grow lethargic during the day, and at night he becomes more wired and alert. His melatonin secretes completely differently then ours do, so none of this behavior at night is his fault. It appeared as sleep walking at first. As the night wears on and he wakes up the first few times, he is still cloudy and groggy, so he would just quietly wander around and eventually he would come to be standing at the foot of our bed. A big creep factor on the nights when his allergies are acting up, it would feel like Darth Vader had crept into our room and was standing at the foot of the bed staring at us sleep, breathing heavy. A bizarre thing to wake to. The deeper we went into night, the more awake LB would become. By the time 3:30 or 4 rolled around he was full on giggles, and it would be a struggle to keep him in his bed laying still. If he would lay still long enough he would sleep another round till 5:30 or 6.

The whole thing is a pattern. We control his allergies and keep the house silent and he has a better chance at staying asleep longer. If something wakes him up, like trouble breathing, or the train, or house noise, he is up. Once he wakes a few times, that melatonin is not working and his clock is reversed and he feels like he needs to stay awake. So we have the hepa filter running constantly to keep the white noise drowning out the outside world as much as possible.

Everyone keeps telling me... WATCH OUT when the baby comes you are going to be SOOOOO sleep deprived. And I am like, let me tell you about LB. I handle all of the putting him back in bed since Cole is locked away in her pillow palace and I don't want her getting up anyway. For the most part it is low maintenance, just the mechanical walking him back to his bed, putting him in it and saying like a robot, "stay in bed, be still, you will fall asleep, I love you." We locked off half of our house, so he can't go into the kitchen, or get to any exit doors to the outside, he was contained to the hallway and would just walk the hall to our room back to his. He follows the rules. He never plays with his toys until morning (his morning) which is between 5:30 and 6. So it was just the constant interruptions of him standing in our room. breathing heavy. Like a creep. The more pregnant Cole gets the more he wants to get into bed with us. He knows what happens once the belly gets to a certain size and he is in full panic mode. He wants to be around Cole every second. He has even been forgoing morning TV to play with Cole before school. I ask him every morning, "'Wow Wow?' or Play with Mama?" and he goes running off into our room with a toy and climbs into bed to play. I am amazed at how aware he is and he has been so much happier and balanced now that he has made the choice to build in one on one Mama time. He figured out that if he skipped watching TV he would get to play with her.

So yes. I was going to write out the list of all the things we tried to get him to sleep, but in the end there was nothing we could do. We manage it with rules and boundaries. So we tried something new last week and it has been getting him to sleep more. We put a lock on his door, and now that his wander option is gone, he just gets bored and will go back to bed much sooner then before. I still hear him get up, but he gets back in his bed and lays down and will drift off from laying still. So we have all been sleeping better. He is still an early riser, but he has stopped the crying at night. Oh the crying... he would get upset and cry because he would walk into our room and want to get into bed with us. Some nights he would just stand there a few minutes and then go back and get into bed. Some nights he would wander off and go lay in the hallway and I would find him sleeping on the floor. Most nights he would try and climb into our bed, and as soon as we would say "go back to your room", or I would take him back and put him into his bed, the water works would start for 20 to 30 minutes. another charming move of his was to open and close his door over and over and over and over. So now that we took the option away, he just gets up, walks around his room a minute, and then goes back to bed. We taught him to knock on his door if he needs us, and so far he only knocks in the morning. I hear him get up, and he will play with his toys for twenty minutes or so, and then he will knock.

From everything that we are reading this is all supposed to get much harder, more frustrating, and more complicated as he gets older, and we are just going to deal with it when that hurdle arrives. For now we are going to ignore the horror stories. He seems happy with this new routine and his mood and emotional balance is riding high these days. Big smiles, belly laughs, and his attempts to talk and verbalize his wants are increasing so fast. He is trying to communicate everything. This is an awesome time for all of us and it feels like he knows that these last few weeks are precious and he is draining everything he can out of these final moments where he has his Mama to himself. Another source of his calm and connection is that Cole has been building time into her routine in the morning to do skin brushing and stretches with him before he has to get dressed for school. We noticed a huge difference in his mood when this started. He loves it. Who wouldn't?

I realize that there are new readers here, and so sometimes when I write about LB I get a lot of emails asking about what's wrong? and is he autistic? and seriously, we aren't trying to create any mystery, we just chose not to write about it until we ourselves have a full grasp of it, and that takes a lot of time, and a lot of Doctors visits, which is just about half way done at this point. You can read this entry HERE it clears some things up. We are taking in the full picture and honestly just enjoying LB in this phase of his life. He is about to be 5 and we are experiencing all of the joys of when a child first learns to talk. He said "broke" this morning (referring to a toy not about us :) and Cole and I both lit up, eyes wide and happy. This is a really awesome time for all of us and so yeah, we are not focusing on the what ifs right now.

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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