For approximately eight years straight, I’ve suffered from persistent night terrors. Their names are Edison, Peter, and Creegan.
To be fair, only Creegan is a serious problem nowadays. But he’s well past his third birthday, and he has gone maybe one or two nights without pestering us. I probably shouldn’t complain—after all, gone are the days when he would repeatedly drop kick me in the face while I slept—but lately, he’s coming in earlier, and earlier, and earlier. On a good night, he’ll spend maybe three hours in his own bed before coming to ours. Half the time—probably more—he comes in before we’re even asleep! We have little stamina for putting up with his hissy fits if we try to get him to go back to his own bed, and heaven knows we’re not interested in accompanying him back to bed as a kind of compromise. (If we offer to take him back, he’s much, much more likely to go.) Even if we do take him back to his bed, he’s likely to return to our room within an hour or so, and sometimes within 10 or 15 minutes. The problem is, I am so damn sleep deprived at this point. I accept some of the blame for that. Maybe I should be going to bed earlier than I do. But no matter when I go to sleep, even if I’m lucky enough to be asleep before Creegan comes calling, he’ll likely wake me up multiple times in the night. Either he’ll keep returning to our room, or if he stays in bed with us, he’ll interrupt our sleep multiple times anyway. For example, he’ll often start grunting in protest at some time during the night when he’s sleeping next to us. He doesn’t seem to be having bad dreams. He just acts like he’s pissed off. So he’ll grunt and jerk his body, like he’s not comfortable and he’s incredibly upset about it. He’ll just keep going and going. If you tell him to quiet down, he gets mad. There’s no real solution, it seems. And I’m just not a good sleeper anymore, so these interruptions can sometimes be extremely detrimental. Even if I get him back to sleep fairly quickly, sometimes the mere waking up leaves me too wide awake (and annoyed) to quickly return to sleep myself. I’ve sometimes laid there for 30–40 minutes after getting Creegan back to sleep, just waiting for my own sleep to return. I’m lucky to get six cumulative hours of sleep a night, and never more than one or two (if I’m very lucky) in a row. Is it any wonder I nowadays have almost constant headaches?
Okay. That’s all I have to say. Just needed to gripe.
Thanks for complaining. It's always good to hear that we aren't alone. Unfortunately for us, our biggest offender is our oldest child. I never would have imagined that his sleeping issues would last as long as they have. Most recently, for a month a half or so, Chad and I would take turns sleeping on a cot in his room. We would close the door, put the cot by it, and every time he woke up we would remind him to get back in bed. It didn't help. At all. As soon as we got sick of sleeping in his room and started both sleeping in our own bed, he was back to getting in bed with us. Seriously, maddening. We just feel defeated and exhausted. Fortunately our middle child is a stellar sleeper. Well, stellar in that he stays in his own bed most nights. Not so stellar because he snores like a middle aged, overweight man and he just doesn't get restful sleep. He is ornery more than he should be. He probably needs his tonsils out and he has horrible seasonal allergies. Poor kid. Our third child still sleeps in a crib in our room, but he is a pretty good roommate. He is still in our room because we only have two bedrooms on the main level at our house. The third room that's downstairs needs to be finished, it's just concrete and a few studs right now.
ReplyDeleteWell. That's all I have to say. Just needed to gripe. :)
I wish somebody could tell you what to do. JoAnna has the same problem and she gets so exhausted too. It makes me suffer to think about it, although I don't remember having this trouble to such an intolerable degree. What is wrong with these kids !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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