Like most parents, we are sleep deprived. However, I had thought once our kids got a little bigger, oh, like 5 and 7, we could count on a good chunk of uninterrupted sleep. Well, I was so very wrong. Every night Cam wakes up at 12:30 and 2:30, like clockwork. Sometimes he will go back if I just rub his back or scratch his hair. But other times that doesn't cut it, and there's a lot of screaming and crying and not a lot of sleep. We had finally had enough and I called the Children's Hospital Sleep Clinic, home of the famous Dr. Ferber, at the recommendation of his pediatrician. I was dreading the ride into Longwood at rush hour, but I was so excited to finally have a professional weigh in on our increasingly ridiculous situation. We met with a nurse practitioner, who was great, with both me and Cam. She gave me a concrete plan to work on and spoke with Cam about what he needed to do to as well. While I'm not psyched to take on some her recommendations, I would basically do anything right now for all of us to sleep through the night at this point. So, starting tonight we are:
-Putting Cam to bed a full hour later than usual. Typically he goes to bed around 7-7:30. But now we need to keep him up until 8:30, so that he is very sleepy and can easily fall asleep on his own. Jen, the NP, thinks he probably needs 10 hours of sleep and we were putting him down too early, causing a lot of bedtime drama. Eesh. I've been known to put my kids down at 6:30 and lie about the time. I really enjoy our evenings alone, this is going to be a tough one. But it's all in the name of sleep.
-If Cam asks me or Tim to come in, we just stand at his door to check on him. We don't go in to rub his back, give him a bad dream shot, or a head massage (you see how ridiculous things have become?) This is also going to be a tough one. I anticipate a lot of crying and whining.
-Wake him at 6:30am if he's not up. What? Wake him up? Blasphemy.
We return to the sleep clinic in a month to report on his progress. Fingers crossed!
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