Friday, April 25, 2014

Eye surgery, nanny crisis, and sleeping, oh my!

I had grand plans to do separate posts about these things, but haven't had a chance to get around to it. Things have been crazy here - super busy, disorganized, a bit much, honestly.

The three main contributors to the chaos are that (1) I had PRK eye correction surgery on April 4th and have had a slower than expected recovery, (2) we've had a Magpie caregiver crisis, and (3) Magpie is not sleeping through the night lately, and we are OLD, and struggling with this.

I'll start with the laser PRK surgery. It's like LASIK except that the entire cornea surface is removed rather than flipped up, so the recovery is longer. Will had it done several years ago. So did four of his family members. I've been the hold out, because I was nervous. All used the same famous surgeon as me. All had quick recoveries and all super happy with the results. I suppose I should not be surprised that I turn out to be the outlier, but...well...I had the surgery almost a month ago, and I'm still having a lot of trouble with my vision - light sensitivity, "ghosting" that means I cannot easily read or write (sometimes can't make out letters or numbers at all), and trouble seeing both far away and close up in terms of focusing. The surgeon says I'm a "slow healer" - all the other family had these symptoms for one day and were back to full speed by three. So I'm banking on this being temporary (when I imagine otherwise I tilt into full-blown panic), but in the meantime, I'm majorly hobbled in all areas of life. It is hard to go grocery shopping, let alone read scientific articles or write grants or patient medical charts. Everything takes three times as long. Work is piling up. Some things I can't do at all. So ugh.

Adding to that is Magpie's caregiver issue. We've had someone great since Magpie was 5.5 months old. Same person - she and Magpie are super attached to each other. We all have a rhythm and routines that for the work to keep the whole household in functional - and happy - shape. Well, this caregiver is 30 weeks pregnant, and texted nearly two weeks ago that she was having contractions in the middle of the night and was heading to the hospital. She was observed and discharged and took the rest of that week off, and thank goodness she and baby seem fine. She wants to return to work part-time, but we are not a part-time working family. And we cannot weather another string of days where we don't know who will be caring for Magpie the next day. Magpie is handling the upheaval pretty well but is now waking in the middle of the night for about an hour and is also crying when being put to bed, which is not her typical style. So I know she's feeling it. So after a string of people, some of whom charged as much as $25/hour cash (gasp!), we have someone filling in, a stranger to Magpie, but someone who seems good and solid and loving, and willing to fill the void until our back up nanny (well-known to Magpie and our home) returns from international travels. So all in all it's been ok, but it's amazing how much more chaotic everything is with our regular routines pulled out from under us.

After reading all of your posts re: bottle and paci weaning (thank you for those!), we tried to choose a middle path. We cut out daytime bottles. We put all pacis out of sight and they are offered in bed only, and only one at that time (Magpie's preference is to put one in her mouth and hold another one or two for safe measure). We've been offering morning and night bottles on request, which she seems mostly not to be requesting. She's slowly drinking more milk from the sippy cup, although much less than when she drank from the bottle. I'm in no special hurry, and with the caregiver upheaval situation ongoing don't want to take away anything that is super comforting to Magpie, but we'd already started on the path, particularly in relation to bottles, and Will does not want to go in the opposite direction.

Regarding the Magpie waking issue - any ideas? We're dying over here with our girl up one and sometimes two hours every night. Do you think the lack of a nighttime bottle might be causing the overnight wake ups? We've also wondered if she's developing a fear of the dark and are experimenting with leaving a very dim light on for her, which helps with the going down to sleep but not with the overnight wake ups. Any other thoughts or ideas? Boy, I'll take anything at this point.

So that's it over here in Mo and Will and Magpie land. Overall things are good. But there are some challenges of late! Very much looking forward to things settling back down and the return of my eyesight (regarding that, please forgive any typos - I can't see them!).

Mo

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20 comments:

  1. We've had these night waking problems periodically. We used a cry it out-type method when both kids were little and have had to repeat it when these problems crop up.

    Did you ever sleep train at all? I can't recall. If so, my advice would be to do it again.

    Is she crying or just awake? What we've done is to go in and check her. Tell her it's nighttime and everyone is sleeping, then go back to bed and let her put herself back to sleep- even if there is crying and such.

    We do the same when there is a bedtime problem.

    Usually, with both kids, we let them cry it out once or twice and they go back to normal.

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  2. Regarding the night waking, my daughter did the exact same thing at almost the same age as Magpie. I thought I was going to die. After maybe a month she went back to her normal awesome sleeping self. Hang in there!

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  3. There sure is a lot going on over there! We had the same issue with Ella waking in the middle of the night. Totally awesome sleeper one night and then all of a sudden she was up for 2 hrs every night! I was dying!! We increased her bedtime by 30 mins until she was sleeping through the night again. She was going down by 6:30-6:45 and now she is down by 7:30. Now we have our good sleeper back. Hope this helps. Good luck!!

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  4. Ugh! Eye problems! Yuck! Hoping that gets better pronto. Sounds like less fun than just about any kind of recovery I can imagine.

    As far as sleep goes, this is just a possibility, but I know Hen was about this age when sleep became an issue again. We started using a 'toddler clock' at about 18 months (when he moved to a toddler bed,) and haven't looked back since. The face glows blue at night and yellow in the day (obv. programmable!) and also functions as a (fairly bright) nightlight.

    For him, just having the easy visual reference, "Yep, still sleeping time!" was enough to let him fall right back to sleep, without having to fully wake up to decide if maybe it was time to start playing. Also, it's made morning wake-ups easy from day one. Highly recommend. If you're interested, let me know & I'll get you the model of the one we have. We're completely sold on it--it's improved his sleep patterns (and therefore mine) HUGELY.

    And all that said, it also sounds like the little one just has a lot on her plate right now. It might be hard for me to sleep with all that going on. Poor kiddo. Hope things ease up soon for all of you!

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  5. My two went through this. Turned out they were tired during day. So we went for a quiet hour after lunch. No tv, no toys, books on reading mats. Still do it and it works wonders. Not sure why!
    Good luck

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  6. Oof. Well I have no words of wisdom and honestly, hardly remember that stage, but if I thought a bottle before bed would help with sleeping through the night I'd definitely try it and see. I am all about everyone getting enough sleep, however that is achieved.

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  7. Oof. Well I have no words of wisdom and honestly, hardly remember that stage, but if I thought a bottle before bed would help with sleeping through the night I'd definitely try it and see. I am all about everyone getting enough sleep, however that is achieved.

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  8. Oof. Well I have no words of wisdom and honestly, hardly remember that stage, but if I thought a bottle before bed would help with sleeping through the night I'd definitely try it and see. I am all about everyone getting enough sleep, however that is achieved.

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  9. I'm thinking 18-month sleep regression. Sorry you're dealing with caregiver issues on top of that -- been there, suffered through that! Hope everything gets smoothed out soon.

    http://askmoxie.org/blog/2006/04/qa_18month_slee.html

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  10. I hope that you recover quickly. With regards to night time wakings, they seem to come and go. Sometimes there have been reasons, like to little food intake and increasing the food intake during the day, buy snacking constantly in the afternoon until dinner and after dinner. Sometimes it has been teeth. Sometimnes there has been no explanation at all. Sometimes she just needs more hugs...Sometimes it has been ear infections, well... I don´t think there is no cure for night time wakings... but maybe it will help (or terrify) that at the age of 3 they seem to be over the night time wakenings.

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  11. We recently went through that stage. I would say we did nothing and it passed, but then I remembered that our standard thing with older baby sleep problems is to try tylenol or motrin and if that works, chalk it up to teething.

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  12. I second the toddler clock. Best thing ever. We got it for E when he was about 18 months and we transitioned to a twin bed. It's been over a year and it keeps him in his bed until 8:00 am. :-) Sounds like Magpie might just be going through a phase with all the other changes happening at the same time. Hopefully when the nanny stuff gets sorted out she'll settle back into her routine.

    I had to google your eye procedure, as I hadn't heard of it. I sure hope it heals quickly. I can only imagine how unnerving vision problems are.

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  13. Mo, Tiny Boy was always a crappy sleeper. One reason after another but I was pretty convinced that being TINY and not getting enough calories in the day was part of it. And indeed, once he hit ~20 lbs (and made his way to the 5th percentile!) and started actually eating DINNER he started sleeping in much longer stretches. had the same experience with LG. so your impulse might be right on.

    otherwise, sudden crappy sleeping might be teething related? we're definitely dealing with that here.

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  14. My LO started waking up around this age, and it turned out to be dislike/fear of the dark. I added a nightlight, then a few months later had to add another, and finally a third. She seems comfortable now.

    Hope your vision improves ASAP!

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  15. I think you're right about why she's waking up (but she could also be sick, or teething). My 4 year old's sleep patterns are very much affected by even small changes in his life. He was traumatised by having to wear a new pair of shoes, then when he got used to the idea, he insisted on putting them on without help (which is pretty difficult because they're not broken in yet). He had an "argument" with his father the other day because the baby was crying and everyone was waiting for him to get his shoes on but he wouldn't allow anyone to help. That night, I heard whimpers from his room at 1 am, where I found him putting his shoes on in his sleep. Apparently, he became frustrated that they wouldn't go on. A couple more times that night he came to me complaining about his shoes!! So yes, even if something doesn't appear to bother them during waking hours, the disruption often reveals itself when they're asleep! ;-)

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  16. OUCH, sorry to hear about your eyes. I hope they fix themselves pronto as I can only imagine the frustration with EVERYTHING needing sight!

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  17. Ugh about the eye recovery issues. Stories like that are what has made me hesitant to do that kind of surgery. And I'm sorry about the nanny situation - that sounds super stressful.

    With regard to the bedtime crying and nighttime waking, I think that's pretty typical for the age. Miss A also seemed to go through that stage around the same age. We hadn't had many sleep issues with her up to that point. As painful as it was for all of us, we finally wound up taking the cry-it-out approach. We'd let her go for about 10 minutes, then one of us would go in there and reassure her that we were still nearby if she needed us, then another 10 minutes, then the other one of us would go in, etc.

    The first night, that cycle went on for literally 2 hours. The next night, it was about 15 minutes, and then the third night, it was about 5 minutes and she laid back down and went to sleep before we went in for the first reassurance. After that, it was back to her normal routine of sleeping without issue.

    The issue does tend to crop up again from time to time. If she's teething or ill and we need to sit with her on our chests for part or most of the night for a few nights because of that, the crying usually re-emerges for a few nights, and we have to go through the cry-it-out process again. We've also found that a crying night can be triggered if she's overly tired and doesn't get to bed on time.

    I keep reminding myself that when I was a tween and teen, my mom had to practically use blasting caps to get me out of bed, so I figure I'd better enjoy this stage while it lasts, because at some point I'll probably be frustrated that she's sleeping too much. :-)

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  18. I agree with the PP that some toddlers just go through that stage at her age, the toddler clocks have worked wonders for friends who have used them.

    I also wonder if there isn't just too much upheaval going on for her all at one time? New nanny, Mommy's acting wonky because she can't see, no bottles and no pacis to hold onto at night. Is there a possiblilitiy, since you are still allowing her the paci at night to suck on that you could still give her the one to hold? I have seen really adorable pacis that are attached to a soft lovey, maybe she could have one of those to help her transition to a soft lovey as a security instead of the paci?
    Just a thought. I hope things get back into a more peaceful routine VERY soon

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  19. I had that eye surgery too last October and the doctor was very vague about recovery...I planned to take a long weekend off and then go back to work but boy was that a mistake! The recovery took so long. I do want to tell you though that for me it has taken time but my vision is almost back to normal...for a long time I had to wear reading glasses to see anything up close but I'm fine now. And those lubricating drops help tons, for me anyway.
    Sorry for the other challenges too...as a working mom I feel like everything's fine as long as there are no hiccups but there's not much room for things like caregiver issues/less sleep than normal/eye issues...that kind of stuff is so hard...you are not alone!

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  20. I had that eye surgery too last October and the doctor was very vague about recovery...I planned to take a long weekend off and then go back to work but boy was that a mistake! The recovery took so long. I do want to tell you though that for me it has taken time but my vision is almost back to normal...for a long time I had to wear reading glasses to see anything up close but I'm fine now. And those lubricating drops help tons, for me anyway.
    Sorry for the other challenges too...as a working mom I feel like everything's fine as long as there are no hiccups but there's not much room for things like caregiver issues/less sleep than normal/eye issues...that kind of stuff is so hard...you are not alone!

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