Something around here is not quite right.
I suspect that spies have infiltrated my blog and have been reading it while I sleep at night.
Behold my main suspects:
Psst...when we get home, we're gonna read what she says about us...keep it on the down low buddy.
After writing the post about my husband laughing at my pizza plight – he became the model husband…folded laundry, let me take a nap, and did several rounds of dishes.
After writing about how Adam wouldn’t eat, he suddenly ate everything that wasn’t nailed down including his staples: chicken nuggets, cheese, four nutrigrain bars, 1/4 bag of tortilla chips with homemade salsa, round after round of crackers and cereal, and half a cow’s worth of milk in one day.
And now? Sadly I regret to inform you that it is life as usual. Ismael is genetically incapable of closing a cabinet and Adam has eaten only wheat thins today shunning all else including a fabulous Father’s Day Brunch assortment and quite possibly the best chicken caesar pasta salad I have ever made (with or without dressing – he wouldn’t touch it).
But more than all this, something is off with his sleep. He’s not sleeping well at night, he’s snoring and waking up hoarse, taking two naps a day because of poor sleep at night.
What really puts me on edge is the unusual nighttime waking. He wakes up, completely disoriented, eyes open but not cognizant of people or surroundings, half crying/half whimpering. He had some odd sleep episodes as young as 4 months old but these have diminished until Thursday night when we increased his Keppra on the neurologist’s schedule.
Oh and Keppra? He doesn’t like to swallow that either.
Friday night’s episode was so weird and disturbing that I decided to call our local hospital’s nurse line. 24/7 service. Just the thing a worried mom needs at 12:10 AM.
I had only one question of an experienced medical professional: Does Keppra interrupt a toddler’s sleep?
That’s really it. I’m not calling the neurologist in the middle of the night to ask that. The pediatrician might not even know that. But I am assuming that when you call a nurse line, are prescreened by a student intern, and WAIT 45 minutes in the middle of the night for a return call that the nurse selected to call you back might actually have some working knowledge of the situation.
What I imagine Loretta the SUPER NURSE looked like when she became a nurse...sixty years ago.
Wrong. Loretta asked me five million questions, and I blearily participated because I wanted to ask her my one, all important question.
Finally she read me the list of side effects…the same list I had already read myself, from the Internet.
I found myself almost begging to just end the conversation already….the italics denote things I may have said or just THOUGHT during my painful, prolonged discussion. You be the judge.
I just want to know if sleep disturbance is a possible side effect and whelp! sounds like it’s not soo….
Well, I really want to help you find the cause of this. Have you {insert basic toddler care items here}.
Yes.
I want to rule out meningitis. Can you check and see if his chin can touch his chest?
Now?
Yes.
But he’s asleep! ::note that italics cannot possibly display the correct level of my indignation at being asked to WAKE a toddler whom I have called Loretta to ask about his sleepless ness.::
Yes.
I’m not doing that. I’m not waking him up.
Have you checked his scrotum?
For what? Lice?
Sometimes a hair wraps around a boys scrotum and it can be quite painful. (I only wish I was joking that she talked about this.)
Well, since my hair is all of an inch and half long and daddy has dread locks I do not think there is hair wrapped around *there*….and we checked him carefully last time he came home from the club. For GOD’S SAKE WOMAN IT’S ONE AM!
::sensing my growing impatience:: Okay, well you don’t think you will hurt him, do you?
WHAT? ::desperately wanting to hang up but now afraid that CPS and the police department will be at my door in a SWAT situation within 3.4 minutes::
Will you hurt him?
Umm… no. I called a HELPLINE ABOUT HIS SLEEP which I am not going to have anytime in the foreseeable future.
Okay, well remember…NEVER shake a baby….and then some blather that I don’t remember because I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Fifteen excruciating minutes later I was released from Loretta’s demonic design of distracting callers from remembering she couldn’t answer your question by many other point less roads.
And this is a road I will not be taking again any time soon.
