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Gideon ate our sleep
Jun. 23rd, 2023 09:19 amAbout a month ago Gideon started sleeping badly.
That isn't that unusual. He regularly has a couple of nights in a row where he wakes up a lot. Can be related to all sorts of things.
But it went on. And on. He was fine during the day, so we eventually worked out that it was because he was lying down. He has a history of ear infections - at one point he was getting one every time he got a cold. So we thought it might be one of those. But he wasn't complaining at all during the day, and when we checked some guidance they indicated that normally kids will recover from an ear infection in a few days all by themselves.
And so we kept figuring that, soon, he would just recover by himself. And it wasn't worth antibiotics, because our experience of Gideon with antibiotics is that he will fight like a tiger, and then spit them all over us, making the entire experience pointless.
And then, finally, on Monday, we decided that we couldn't go on being woken up hourly every night. And so I phoned the doctor at 8:30 (once the kids were in nursery), and discovered that all of their appointments for the day were gone. So on Tuesday I phoned them at 8:00, got put straight into a call queue, got through within 5 minutes, and was given an appointment for 9:10.
Jane took him in (our arrangement is that she tends to do Gideon things and I tend to do Sophia things, although it's now much easier for me to do Gideon things too), and the doctor said "Very mild inflammation around his ear, here's some Amoxicillin".
That night, with some trepidation, we gave him a dose, with the promise of a sweet afterwards. And he took the medicine, swallowed it, and grabbed the sweet out of my hands. And has been really really easy to dose ever since.
And then, two days later, last night, he only woke up twice in the night, fed briefly, and went back over near-instantly.
I don't feel like a real human being yet. I'm going to need a few nights of this first. But the last few days I have been in pieces*, and I am so looking forward to feeling recovered.
*On Thursday I wondered where an Amazon parcel was. And checked the site, where it said "Oh, we delivered that yesterday, here's a picture of it on your porch." And I worried about people stealing it from the porch, and whether the builders had moved it somewhere, and what could have happened to it, and whether I should complain to Amazon. And then I found it on my office floor, and remembered that it *had arrived the previous day* and that I'd opened it, and tried it on, and shown it to Jane. And then that part of my memories had simply detached itself and floated away into the ether.
That isn't that unusual. He regularly has a couple of nights in a row where he wakes up a lot. Can be related to all sorts of things.
But it went on. And on. He was fine during the day, so we eventually worked out that it was because he was lying down. He has a history of ear infections - at one point he was getting one every time he got a cold. So we thought it might be one of those. But he wasn't complaining at all during the day, and when we checked some guidance they indicated that normally kids will recover from an ear infection in a few days all by themselves.
And so we kept figuring that, soon, he would just recover by himself. And it wasn't worth antibiotics, because our experience of Gideon with antibiotics is that he will fight like a tiger, and then spit them all over us, making the entire experience pointless.
And then, finally, on Monday, we decided that we couldn't go on being woken up hourly every night. And so I phoned the doctor at 8:30 (once the kids were in nursery), and discovered that all of their appointments for the day were gone. So on Tuesday I phoned them at 8:00, got put straight into a call queue, got through within 5 minutes, and was given an appointment for 9:10.
Jane took him in (our arrangement is that she tends to do Gideon things and I tend to do Sophia things, although it's now much easier for me to do Gideon things too), and the doctor said "Very mild inflammation around his ear, here's some Amoxicillin".
That night, with some trepidation, we gave him a dose, with the promise of a sweet afterwards. And he took the medicine, swallowed it, and grabbed the sweet out of my hands. And has been really really easy to dose ever since.
And then, two days later, last night, he only woke up twice in the night, fed briefly, and went back over near-instantly.
I don't feel like a real human being yet. I'm going to need a few nights of this first. But the last few days I have been in pieces*, and I am so looking forward to feeling recovered.
*On Thursday I wondered where an Amazon parcel was. And checked the site, where it said "Oh, we delivered that yesterday, here's a picture of it on your porch." And I worried about people stealing it from the porch, and whether the builders had moved it somewhere, and what could have happened to it, and whether I should complain to Amazon. And then I found it on my office floor, and remembered that it *had arrived the previous day* and that I'd opened it, and tried it on, and shown it to Jane. And then that part of my memories had simply detached itself and floated away into the ether.
