A Nighttime Admission

I wrote an entry a long time ago about kids and their sleeping issues. I have pretty much chalked up E's waking up and crying/screaming issues to bad parenting...we must be reinforcing some bad behavior, but we don't know what it is, and we haven't figured out how to stop it. In short...E rarely has a "good night". By rarely I mean...once every two weeks? Maybe?

We try to "switch it up" when we can, and that's only after some big change of events. Like, if we have to spend the night in a strange place, then when we come home, instead of going into E's room if she screams, we'll approach her door and say "we will come in when you speak to us in a nice voice". Recently, E was sick for a whole week with strep throat. So, screaming only made her condition more painful, which made it even more to cry about. So we held her on the couch. We cuddled with her when we could. I mean, E was miserable, she was sick, she was throwing up, she was feverish...she needed to be coddled and loved, so a parent was with her or on a neighboring couch all night. We started gradually weaning her to her bed, as she got better. And so here we are. Again. Same issues.

What issues? I HAVE NO IDEA. She goes to sleep fine. She just wakes up every night. Sometimes she's not fully awake and crying loudly...I come in and whisper "Elena, what is happening?", you know, in case she says she's being eaten by a dinosaur or something. Last night I got a "I can't stop". (this is a big deal, normally I don't get any words) "You just can't stop what?" "I just can't stop being bad" [SCREAM]! Here we go again.

So...here is my confession. I've been harboring some harsh judgement for some parents who "medicate their kids" to make their lives easier at night. Like, they don't even give their kids a chance to behave before they've already shoved a pill in their mouth. I'm pretty opinionated about that. And to be frank, I know some parents who now medicate their kids, who felt just like I do about it. Well, when E was sick, she had some codeine-laced concoction for pain and to help her sleep. I remember from SDR, she doesn't do well with codeine, it seems to make her nauseous. It did make her sick, but only a little, and after that she slept pretty well. I didn't want to do that again, but I considered using Benedryl, which is what some of the "medicating parents" give their children. I insisted it wasn't for my convenience, but for E's, who has had 5 very sick nights and needed rest to get better.

The night was just about perfect. I admit it. She got up once, I pressed the blanket to her, and she went back to sleep.

The next night I thought maybe the memory of a good night's sleep (she acknowledged she felt great the next morning) and a fun tiring day would be enough for another good night. WRONG. And so here I am writing this post.

So here I am. I feel like a failure when it comes to nighttime parenting with E. Jason and I share this frustration. We tend to tow the "hard line", meaning we show E we are not going to put up with screaming behavior and remove her from her comforts. We don't spank, we don't yell, but we use silence as a reinforcer and explain things in nice voices when she is ready to listen--which she does, and she does acknowledge she has been behaving badly. I think she gets the idea of punishment (in this case, she doesn't get to return to her nice warm bed after a meltdown), but she sees it coming and then gets upset b/c she knows what will happen. She understands choices, and knows the choices are hers. And yet this happens just about every night.

What I am learning is this is a huge stress for my husband and I. That one night when Elena isn't a nighttime problem, was as if the Heavens opened up and music started playing from the parting clouds ("aaaah!"), SERIOUSLY. If we could fix this, our relationship would improve so much. So here I am.

I'm going to try one week of Benedryl. I'll write a post about it and my thoughts once it's over. I feel defeated...but maybe one week is all I need? To get E in a good pattern? It is worth it to me.