Relief

Ahh, D slept last night. Thank the lord and all things holy – finally! With all the pleading and praying I did for her to sleep these past couple days, I should probably start going to church.

It seems like she is finally on the right medicine, so hopefully her ears will clear up soon as well. The itching stopped (although no thanks to the Benadryl. little did i know excitability in children is also a side effect. so it either knocks them out or winds them up, and D was spinning like a top. wish i’d known that before i kept pumping it in her to make her stop scratching), the rash is gone, the fever is down, and the sweet sweet sleep came back. I did stay home with her yesterday after the sleepless weekend and since her rash wasn’t completely gone at that point (it’s not contagious or anything, but i knew she was very low on sleep and eating so didn’t want to throw her back into daycare quite yet), and she still didn’t nap well – maybe an hour or so total all day. But other than that we actually had a great day together – no more Fs. The day went so well, in fact, that I even walked D up to the grocery store, made dinner, and had it all ready by the time R got home. That NEVER happens.

It was still a bit of a struggle to get her to go to bed last night, though, so I was afraid we were going to have another round of nighttime war. But maybe she just really did want to keep playing until 9pm – had to get that last round of walking around the coffee table in and rolling that last ball under the couch, apparently. She did wake up once, about 2 hours after I put her to bed, but fortunately went right back to sleep after just a few minutes of rocking. And I heard her cry out once more later on in the middle of the night and again thought we were done for, but magically she put herself right back to sleep with no waking. I put some blankets under one end of her mattress on Sunday night, since I’ve heard that the incline helps their ears hurt less when there’s an infection in there, but who knows if that’s doing any good or not. Sunday night it was pointless, then last night she did ok. I have a feeling it’s more the medicine finally taking hold instead of the incline, but I may leave it like that for another night or two just to make sure. This new antibiotic is only a 5 day duration, so tomorrow is the last dose anyway. I just can’t even express how relieved I am that her little body finally cooperated with her and gave her the rest she so desperately needed.

R went to bed really early last night because he was exhausted too and never sleeps well even on a good night, and even he got a full, sound night’s sleep for the first time in, oh, I don’t know, ever? So you see – it’s amazing the power of those dark hours they call sleep. Not to scare all of you soon-to-be new or thinking-about-being-soon-to-be new parents out there or anything, but GET THEM IN WHILE YOU STILL CAN!