The world continues to baffle me and fascinate me in equal parts. Lately, or rather, for the past year, my three year old, and her inability to sleep has simply captivated me, in the most unromantic sense of the word.
To be perfectly honest, which you know I can't help but be, there is no lack of sleep issues in this house. She comes by it naturally, just like her fuzzy legs, but I can't take much credit for those. As a child, I would wake in the middle of the night and "act out" my dreams. Aware that I was dreaming, but unable to fully wake up, I would sit in bed and interact with "people", sometimes for hours. It was one thing to be dreaming about hanging out with my high school crush, but quite a different thing to be crawling on the floor looking for homework to hand in to an angry teacher, only to wake up holding a wadded up sock. The worst nights involved dreams where I was sitting on the bleachers at a basketball game in my underwear, can you imagine the middle school horror? Yikes!
Anyway, after seeing a sleep specialist, who was no help what so ever, I ended up on Ambien for a DECADE. I no longer take Ambien, though I wish I did, so now I have insomnia, it's swell. So, in the Pearson home, we are well stocked with melatonin in all forms. It's a miracle people don't collapse into a slumber as they casually walk past the kitchen cabinet where I hoard the stuff. But it works, and it's not addicting, says the melli hoarder...
So now, our poor Ella can't sleep, she says...and as a parent, I spend hours wondering, can she really not sleep, or is she just in the habit of not sleeping? Is there even such a thing? It sounds like something a crazy person would do? Who in God's name would ever make a habit of not sleeping??
But alas, each night, this is how it unfolds. Ella goes to bed at seven, exhausted. She wakes up anytime between midnight and three, and proceeds to begin playing. In the past, she used to come get us, or need us to sleep with her, but now she knows that mommy and daddy get SERIOUSLY TICKED OFF, so she pretty much keeps to herself. That is, unless she needs us to find her doll's "bride dress", tear out a picture from her coloring book, help her unclog the ice dispenser, or rip out a string of floss so she can continue treating her line of "dental patients". She paints pictures, gets snacks, colors, plays dress up, reads books and sings songs. When the baby wakes up to nurse, and I walk by Ella's room, it's as if a bomb has gone off. There she is, wide awake, having the best time of her life.
We have tried to rub her back to relax her back to sleep, we have tried to teach her relaxation breathing to get herself back to sleep. We have talked and talked and TALKED about good sleeping habits with her. She has a reward box for sleeping through the night. We have bribed her with pancakes for breakfast, we have been firm, and threatened her with punishments. She has a clock that tells her when to wake up, and when to go back to sleep. Just today we were talking about how when we play at night, it makes it hard to go back to sleep, and she is SO TIRED (no pun intended of course) of hearing us blab on and on about sleep, that she said "I KNOW!! NO PRINCESSES, NO COLORING, NO SNACKS, JUST SLEEPING". But still, NOTHING WORKS. When I ask her why she isn't sleeping, she looks at me and says honestly, "I don't know how".
You all know what a regular three year old is like during the day, right? Now imagine one who doesn't sleep. Everything is really awesome, until anything isn't awesome anymore. Like, your paintbrush is "too wide", or your beans are the wrong color, or you have to get dressed, eat, drink, wiggle your toe, stand up or GOD FORBID...breath air...ughhh. You would think someone killed her puppy, ALL DAY LONG, right in front of her. When she gets that way, I feel like running away from home holding her and making her world right, but it's hard.
We went to a pediatric sleep specialist who suggested it was our parenting, but as I explained our story, she nodded and felt we were doing everything right, and should continue. It was her belief that if Ella napped consistently, she would sleep at night consistently. I thought that was a great idea, and waited anxiously for her to write the script for "napping pills", since I could imagine no other way to consistently get Ella to nap. But, we left empty handed, and deflated, wearing a big old fake smile. I spent the 45 minute drive home telling the specialist exactly what I thought of her expertise, as well as her compensation for her great depth of knowledge, all while Ella slept soundly.We all felt better by the time we pulled into the driveway. As it turns out though, consistent naps were not the key.
So, at the end of my rope, I took her to see my chiropractor. We spent over an hour there, and came home with a bag full of herbal supplements that were going to require a mortal, pestle and some serious voo doo to get them down Ella's gullet. When we burst through the door, feeling accomplished, Anthony asked how it went. Despite my concerns regarding the herbal elixirs and the fact that we were going to have to buy a straight jacket to get them into Ella's body, I was really excited to share our experience.
"So, check this out honey. I laid on the table, and then Ella sat on my lap, and we all held hands and passed around jars of pills and viles of liquid, and the doctor tried to push our arms, and she put her hand on our organs and glands, and we made this really neat circle of energy that changed depending on what little glass jar we held, and who was touching who, aaaaaand.....did you know I have a significant wheat allergy, isn't that crazy, but it makes so much sense, doesn't it??? Why are you looking at me like that???, Oh, how much did I spend? well.... can you reaaally put a price tag on your family's health? I mean, don't you want to sleep too?"
So after all the bottle swapping, and vile holding, the chiropractor came to the conclusion that Ella (who admittedly) was off the wall bonkers with exhaustion, had ADHD as well as digestive issues. For a day or so, I believed the chiropractor, until I came back to my senses, and realized that I'm the mama, and I know my babies better than any other person on this planet. Clearly, she does not have ADHD, she is three years old.
I could tell Anthony wanted to believe in the magical diagnostic procedure, but just couldn't. The more I talked, the more I felt like I had been doing voodoo with the witch doctor, and had been stabbed in the brain with the pin. Part of me felt like she had tricked me, because it was so difficult to explain the nutritional response testing, but part of me felt like I was doing what any good parent does, exhausting all options. When exhausted, exhaust, or something.
At one point in our search for the ever evasive sleep, I turned to an online forum of mommies, who I love dearly for their support and advice. I apprehensively laid out our sleep issues, and watched throughout the day as the number of views for my post grew and grew. I waited anxiously for an answer, anything, ANYTHING....but nothing. I imagined mommies reading through our issues, thinking "damn, that's a rotten can of worms right there", and then moving on to a question or issue they could actually relate to. It was the equivalent to virtual cyber crickets, and a few sympathetic posts, sprinkled with "hopefully it's just a phase!". I appreciated it, but felt so isolated that NO ONE had dealt with this problem.
And in the end, as it often goes, you can search and search and search google, only to find that the answer is inside yourself. I had been everywhere, gathered information from every source I could think of, and though Ella had learned to leave us alone at night, she had not learned to get back to sleep.
So, I began praying, and the place that prayer often leads us is back to ourselves, and back to the truth. I knew that getting Ella to sleep was not the job of a chiropractor, though they may help. It was not the job of a sleep specialist, though they may help too. In reality, it was our job to do the hard work and grind it out until she could learn to get herself back to sleep.
Now we are three days into sleep boot camp, and I am thrilled to say we have had three solid nights of sleep. We have eliminated naps, and suffered through her afternoon whining. We moved all toys to the basement, and installed a ridiculously complicated baby gate that requires a special combination of curse words, and a game of twister for your fingers get it to open. We have been taking turns on the couch each night, so that if she so much as attempts to leave her room, or turn on a light in the hall, we rush her back to bed before she is fully awake. As I write this, it all seems so OBVIOUS, but that's how hind sight works.
I'm not ready to say the little lady doesn't have "sleep issues", but I am ready to say that we have done EVERYTHING we can do as parents to help her. The rest is up to God, after all, He's the one who created this passionate, creative, sensitive and thought-full little person. So, we are holding out on the straight jacket and the herbs for now...well, at least until middle school.
It seems that sleep is a common issue for parents, though a lot of you appear to have a much better grip on it than we do, or maybe it's just something people don't talk about, like finances, I don't know. But just when I thought I had a grip on this whole "parenting" conundrum, I realized that I was doing a lot of things wrong, and needed to have a one on one, heart to heart with myself. I also realized that it is possible to ignore God's voice, and your own inner voice for a very long time, it simply makes life a lot harder.
So, I guess it's time to be honest with myself, do the hard work, and see what comes of it. Even if it doesn't lead to sleep, doing hard work, and doing good work will always just make your soul feel better anyway, and that's gotta be worth something. After all, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey, and I'll be damned if Ella isn't taking us on one bucket ride of a journey!
