I just noticed a not so funny thing about our home. Our routine has changed, our expectations or what can be expected in the nights shortly after we put our kiddos to bed, has changed. In the past, a pitter-patter of feet excitedly ‘sneaking’ across the floor could be heard within minutes of sending our kiddos to their slumbers. Even ample kisses, promises of errands in the night (fetching this item or that) won’t keep them in bed.
Now, silence. No feet. No giggles or tentative looks around a corner before leaping into our parental evening. Now, the kiddos sleep. If they can’t sleep, they play in their room, quietly using up the rest of their days energy reserve. And now it’s the middle of the night that is filled with sleeplessness.
Within minutes sometimes as long as an hour after we make our way to ending our day, they appear. One after another as if tag-teaming in a game of relentless ‘quality’ time. Talks of bad dreams, itches, just wanted to see you’s….they get us at our sleepiest, with our own reserves achingly in the negative, when we’re at our weakest ability to return them to their beds. Needless to say, we’re sleep-deprived, though in truth it’s nothing new.
J has never been a sleeper. We found out, late, that it was due to his ‘special’ form of epilepsy that refuses to allow him the restfulness of REM. Countless anti-epileptic medications later, we had gotten much better. The days of the past, of 48 hours without 5 minutes of sleep, long gone, we count these days as better. However….
However, J has been taken off his Gluten, Casein, Soy, Egg and Peanut free diet. Partially for this new discovery, partially for additional ‘solid’ allergy testing that will be completed on June 6th. We see the change. His is skin showing the battles of allergies gone array. Behavior is more erratic. His sleep….oh, his sleep. It’s not good. But, this is what we’re doing for now, because more testing is needed, more solid and final answers sought…and in the meantime, I’m thinking of getting a hotel room for one night of solid sleep.
What about you? How is the sleep in your life? If it’s as this, Do you know why?
