Nate’s still recovering from his cold, so in an effort to help him sleep better, he’s been sleeping in Maggie’s room, and Maggie is sleeping with Gus and me in our bedroom. I actually love sleeping with her except for one thing: she has a tendency to try to sleep ON me. I’m a tosser and turner, and this just doesn’t work for me.
So last night, we went to bed at 11 (yeah, yeah…even the kids go to bed late in our house, although 11 is a super early night for me), and I was feeling very tired because I’m getting sick again. However, I was having insomnia for some unknown reason, and as of midnight or so, I was still awake. During this hour, Maggie kept scooting on top of me, and I kept moving her back to her side of the bed. (It’s a king, for heaven’s sake!) This is not uncommon on nights we bed share, which we’ve been doing a lot of lately since Nate’s surgery. (He had to sleep alone then to keep anyone from accidentally hitting him in the recovering eye.) It’s never been a problem.
But last night, around midnight, she started crying. I knew she was upset that I had moved her and wouldn’t let her snuggle anymore. At first, I kind of rolled my eyes that she was being melodramatic. I told her (admittedly not in my nicest voice) to quit crying and go back to sleep. She was still upset, so I gave in an snuggled her a bit to calm her down because I was afraid she was going to wake Gus, who had already had a difficult time falling asleep. However, she progressed to hiccupping sobs. I’ll shamefully admit that I was starting to get angry. She was totally overreacting, and I was tired, and she was getting really loud.
So finally I said, “Get up and get out of the room. We can’t wake up Gus.” And we both got up and came out to the family room, where she continued to sob and refused to actually say anything. She just cried and cried. I was still kind of angry, but it’s also hard for me to stay angry when I see her sobbing like that. Finally, she tells me that she was upset that I “pushed” her. I explained to her that I just moved her, and we again went over the Reasons Why Mommy Can’t Sleep With Someone on Top of Her. And even though she said she understood, she was still sobbing.
And then it all finally made sense: “Mommy, my ear really hurts.”
Faaaaantastic. She’s got an ear infection, and here I’ve been mad at her. Granted, I didn’t know she was hurting (and I’d even asked her earlier if she felt sick because her behavior was so unusual), but still. So I gave her some ibuprofen for the pain and some Alpha CF (a homeopathic cold/flu remedy that we usually use religiously and with great results when she’s sick, but we’d been lax on this time with our trip to NYC), and actually sent her off to bed with Nate in case she woke up again crying. Gotta minimize the number of waking babies, ya know?
Fortunately, this morning she says her ear doesn’t hurt, it just feels “clogged.” (Although her chin and her legs supposedly do hurt. Huzzah?) So I’m hoping her body is fighting it off quickly, but if she’s not better by tomorrow, we’ll go to the doctor. In the meantime, we’re plugging away with the Alpha CF. I’m actually feeling most guilty about that. Normally, I’m very good at giving that to her at the first sign she has a cold, and she hasn’t had an ear infection in the more than 2 years that we’ve been using it. So I’m feeling bad that forgetting to get her on the Alpha CF sooner is probably what caused this. And I feel really terrible about snapping at her last night when she was in so much pain – I had my share of ear infections throughout elementary school, and I remember distinctly (almost viscerally) how badly they hurt.
What was that I was saying just two days ago about my parenting toolbox? It might be nice if I actually opened the damn thing and used some of the tools every once in awhile…
