The Past Few Months

Many friends have pointed out that I haven't been blogging lately. I'm going to tell you why.

It's not fun like "we're pregnant!" (because we're not) and it's not glamorous like "we won a million dollars and we've been lying low" (I wish). But it's the truth, and since our little girls will probably someday read this to learn about their earliest days I'm going to be honest. Please be understanding.

From the time Jane was 5 weeks old, she slept through the night. I know, I'm ridiculously lucky. She slept like a champ for the first year of her life. After her first birthday she started waking up more and more. Then you may remember a post I wrote last March entitled, "Sleep Deprivation is Awesome" I talked about how Jane had randomly decided to stop sleeping entirely. She had gone four days/nights without sleeping. We ended up moving her into a toddler bed early since she screamed as soon as we put her in her crib. This helped somewhat. Looking back I believe that she probably hated her crib because she was often wide awake much of the night and was tired of it. So being in the crib made her grumpy. Switching to the toddler bed helped because she could access her books and stuffed animals in the night. She just didn't sleep.

We had several instances after that when she wouldn't sleep at all. Often it was just for an hour or two in the middle of the night but then she wouldn't sleep at all. It wasn't that she was drowsy either, she just acted like it was always the middle of the day. In fact, the less sleep she got, the more active she became. We learned when Jane is over-tired, she doesn't get drowsy like most kids, she gets hyperactive.

This went on until July (aka the worst month ever). In July Jane NEVER slept without a fight. We were lucky if she would sleep 4 hours (broken up) in the night. After a month, she was really hyperactive, stubborn, melted down at anything, and had huge bags under her eyes. It was so sad and frusterating. You may remember that at this point I was 9 months pregnant. We were exhausted. When Penny was born I sent her to the hospital nursery every night because it was the first (and last) time I was able to sleep.

You can imagine the fun when we had a newborn thrown into the mix. Oh, and Scott was super busy with his Emergency Medicine rotation in July as well. Not only was he super busy, but it was his most important rotation of med school, because he needed an awesome letter of recommendation to send out with his residency applications.

At Penny's 4 week appointment I mentioned to our doctor that Jane wasn't sleeping. She gave me some tips about setting a bed time routine/blacking out windows/noise machine/etc. I had literally tried EVERYTHING. She was shocked when she realized just how severe the problem was and how much we had tried to resolve it on our own. At this point she acknowledged that this was a medical issue and would definitely need to be dealt with. She told me she would look into it (we were the first time she had heard of such a thing) and get back to us.

She called me about a week later and told me she had found a Pediatric Sleep Specialist at Childrens who was taking referals. We set up an appointment and prayed we could get some answers. At the end of September (after 3 months of averaging 4 hours of broken up sleep a night) we had our appointment. The specialist pretty much gave us the same rundown as our doctor. Asked us about sleep hygiene (habits), etc. He also was surprised that we had truly tried every suggestion he had for us already. He decided to refer us to a pediatric gastroenterologist on the off-chance Jane might have acid reflux. I asked him what we could do in the mean time. He said keep trying everything on the list he gave us. I reminded him that we had done everything (we literally had) and he sighed and told us that he initially thought Jane had Behavioral Sleep Insomnia, which can be helped by changing sleep hygiene, but since we were doing everything right, it couldn't be that. He then diagnosed Jane with Childhood Insomnia. I asked him what we could do to treat it and he said, "Nothing. She will grow out of it in 3-5 years."

Well we saw the Ped GI and were given some meds for Jane and Penny (who the GI immediately labeled as having reflux). We tried the meds for both girls and it made a world of difference for our ever-fussy Penny, but didn't help Jane at all. After two months we took Jane off the meds, but Penny is still on them and we notice as soon as she misses a dose. So something good came out of that appointment.

Our doctor told us to try giving Jane melatonin, which we could buy at a health food store. This has helped, it causes her to be sleepy and sleep for a few hours. Sometimes it's enough, sometimes it's not. We try not to give it to her unless she is showing signs that she will be up all night, because it's still a supplement and since they aren't regulated there is no way to be completely safe.

So please, cut us some slack when we refuse to wake our toddler up from a nap, or we miss a playdate/church/event because we were literally awake all night. It's been insanely hard and we're doing our best.

After Penny was born I started having some serious post-partum depression. We're working on that, but some days are better than others. Now we're beyond the point of post-partum but the depression has still been an issue. Again, we're doing our best.

Penny is doing better on her acid reflux meds, but she still is a clingy baby who loves her mama and constant snuggles. I'm just soaking it up because I love snuggling her almost as much as she loves being snuggled. Thankfully Penny is a better sleeper than Jane, but Penny is usually up 1-2 times a night. It's manageable. We are counting the days until we can move into a bigger house with thicker walls so the girls don't wake each other up at night (that's a constant struggle).
 
The good news is that Jane's sleep has been under pretty good control the last couple of months. We definitely have hard days where she is awake for hours in the night, but for the most part she gets 9-ish hours of sleep (albeit broken up) a night. So that's amazing in our house.