About That Sleeping Thing…..

As a fully acknowledged morning person, even I am puzzled at times. Notwithstanding my usual awakening between 5-5:30 a.m. when I have more multiple projects than normal, I will be awake between 4:00-4:30, but usually only one morning of the week. Last week it was three mornings and I started yesterday at 4:30. This morning was worse with the 3:00 a.m. tossing and turning. I gave up at 3:45 and am truly hoping to fit in a nap this afternoon. Anyway, this leads to the discussion I had with the kids about the coming granddaughter. See, Dustin didn’t sleep as a child. When I say didn’t sleep I mean that went on until age four. We started with waking up every 45 minutes to 2 hours. I had been told and read that despite what I believe to be the myth of some babies sleeping through the night from a few days old, that unless coping with colic, I could expect him to sleep through within 3-4 weeks. The colic situation would stretch that to 3-4 months. When that time frame came and went, the number of suggestions for what I should do were plentiful and varied.

Nothing worked and I mean nothing. Now he did get to where he could manage for three hours at a time, but except for rare occasions, that was it. After about eighteen months of this, we had moved and I had been recommended to this one pediatrician. I explained everything and he agreed to give me a sleeping medicine that he said he doubted would help and to just brace myself for having a child that didn’t sleep. He was right – it was worse than useless and after three tries, it got poured down the drain. I ultimately called to the pediatrician who had treated me when I was a kid and after several questions, she semi-echoed the opinion of there was nothing that I could do, but she did say in her experience, this kind of situation resolved itself around age four. Since that was two years in the future, I was hardly thrilled with the news, but it turned out that she was correct. Go figure. I don’t have the faintest idea if this will be a genetic thing, but I certainly hope for the kids’ sake, that it isn’t.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags are not allowed.