Desperately Seeking Sleep

Sophie’s been waking up almost every night complaining that her teeth hurt and demanding medicine. She recently finished cutting her two-year molars and was, I believe, in considerable pain during the process. But I’m afraid it developed into a habit of her demanding medicine even after the teeth were completely erupted. It took a while for me to catch on that they only hurt at night… at almost the same time every night…  and I finally got a good look into her mouth the other day and realized that there was no need to give her anything anymore. But by the time I realized her ongoing hoax, who knows how long we’d been giving her pain medicine when she didn’t need it.

Now we recognize that there’s a problem but we aren’t exactly sure of how to break the habit. The problem is that she’s waking at 2 in the morning and we’re all very tired and she tends to scream and throw a tantrum if she doesn’t get her way. Often waking the other two kids and creating a big situation. So just saying no isn’t a really attractive option when push comes to shove and all I want to do is get back to sleep, not babysit a screaming hissy fit.

When I pushed her a bit and asked her to point to me where her teeth hurt, she pointed to her lower front incisors. Um, clearly not teething issues. But maybe she really did fall and hurt those teeth?

I’m thinking at this point it might be worth a co-payment and a trip to the pediatrician even if only to have an authority figure tell her she doesn’t need medicine anymore. I suspect that if the doctor says she doesn’t, then she won’t put up a fight.

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And then there are my own sleep issues. Namely, I cannot seem to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Much of it has to do with 1. having more energy 2. that introvert time that Amy wrote about and 3. the fact that it is too easy to fall back on the afternoon nap as a crutch (even when I don’t want to fall asleep, I find myself nodding off over my book). Of course, sleeping an hour in the afternoon then just perpetuates the cycle of staying up too late because I’m not that tired at bedtime.

Anyway, I’m also sure a big part of the problem is that I’m not 100% convinced it is a problem. I like being up late. Or at least I just don’t like getting up early and being tired during the day; but somehow the like of being up at night always seems to outweigh those other negatives. Especially when it’s the only time I can get any writing done and there are so many things I’m burning to write about. Though the irony is that I’ve been getting precious little writing done.