Thursday, August 25, 2011

The light at the end of the (lack of) sleep tunnel

In my previous post I wrote about how I love Dorothy at our clinic. Well, yesterday we were at the clinic for Mikail's appointment to see what is up with his (lack of) sleep. We were sitting in the waiting room waiting for our turn and Dorothy comes out of her office and sits down with us telling me that they still don't know if and when Dr. Langer is going to be back and that she worries about us driving the hour there and then the hour back in winter to see who knows what doctor is going to be in for Dr. Langer, if any. She said that in June/July they had an amazing Locum Physician in who is now starting a practice in GP and she would highly recommend that we try to get in to see him on his Meet and Greet sessions to see if he would take our family on as patients. She said she would miss seeing us and Mikail's progress, but that this unknown business must be hard for us considering Mikail's history. So true. So, we immediately made an appointment for a Meet and Greet session with this doctor. I hope he'll take us on. Oh, and a weird aside? He is starting up his practice in Superstore. Weird, huh? Guess we can grocery shop and see the doctor all at once. ha

Back to Mikail's appointment. The Locum Physician that was in checked Mikail over and found nothing medically wrong with him (thank goodness--we thought it might be an ear infection) and highly suspects that his sleep issues are behavioral which is common at this age when they are developing their own will and opinions on things. So, basically the doc was saying that Mikail is stubborn (or strong-willed as Jason would put it). His opinion was to take all distractions out of his crib, lay him down with a slightly heavier quilt over him. He said it acts as a mild restraint, but is also comforting at the same time. Then, let him figure out that he needs to go to sleep on his own. Leave the room and check to make sure he is not throwing up or stopped breathing now and again--I check every 15 minutes or when it gets really quiet. Basically the whole 'cry it out' method. The cry it out method breaks my heart and I hate it, but after a whole week of doing the heavier quilt and leaving the room thing working, I am convinced that it works for Mikail (for now). We had started doing this on our camping trip before even talking to the doctor. The less I return to his room the more quickly he goes to sleep. Last night he woke up at midnight and it took less than an hour of following this method and he was back to sleep until 7 a.m.

Another thing we have been using now and again when his crankiness sounds like teething pain is using a homeopathic teething drop called Camilia. We think it works a whole lot better than anything we have tried. It's amazing.

1 comment:

Monica said...

I hate the cry it out thing. But for us, it got to the point where I was not coping being up so much with the babes. It got to the point where letting them cry it out was the lesser of two evils. Once our kids were not babies anymore (I don't remember how old they were, but they were still in a crib), we would sit in their rooms and read. We'd gradually, over the span of a week or two, end up reading in the hall and then not at all. We'd usually have a hall light on, or read on our laptops, so we could see what we were reading. We actually still sit in Kalem's room and read almost every night until he falls asleep. If he's up at night (which he still is sometimes) we try other things now.