Sleep Diaries: Volume Illness

January 24th
I started to apply the idea of staying in the room long after he is in is crib. And we did get a nice longer stretch from 12:30 - 4:30. The only problem was, instead of staying in his room the 5 minutes I had planned to, I stayed in there sleeping in the chair until 2am. Oops.

January 25th - January 26th
I put him down like normal. No Problems. He slept decently, woke up at 9:30 or so and I resettled him, continuing both times the idea of staying in the room longer. He woke up again around 10:45pm. While it had been almost four hours, I decided to stick to the rule and try to put him down without feeding him, and it worked. Again, I stayed in after he went to sleep for quite awhile. He woke up again at 12:30 or so and I fed him. I tried to put him down and he would have absolutely nothing to do with it. It was pretty nasty. When I picked him up I realized he felt quite warm. I eventually (1:30?) took him down and changed his diaper, checked his temp. 102.9F. Lovely. Gave him Motrin and rocked him, he seemed to go out like a light but would not let me put him in the crib. I am not entirely sure what happened. I thought I had left him in the crib and sat down to try and let him settle (last thing I remember),but I woke up at 3:30am holding him sitting in the rocker. I put him down in the crib successfully this time and went to bed, 4:30am he started fussing and I started to send DH because I was exhausted, but the monitor went silent before DH got up. He started fussing again at 4:45am. I realized it was time to feed him so I got up and did it. I tried putting him back down after I fed him but he started screaming bloody murder. After about 10 minutes the screaming over the monitor (despite any of my efforts) woke up DH and I let him take over and went to bed. About 20 minutes later DH brought him into our bed. He still was fussing and would not settle. We tried all the positions and tricks that normally settle him and finally after quite awhile I got him to settle for about an hour. He woke up and was restless/could not get comfortable again around 6:15am, and again tried all the tricks in the book and eventually got him to settle. 7:30 he woke up screaming and could not be calmed. He still felt quite cool. I sent DH to change his diaper. When he came back up, we turned on the TV and he fell asleep on me sitting up watching TV (This is probably the first time we intentionally had him watch TV. Desperate times, desperate measures). I leaned back a bit and he slept on my chest for 2 hrs, until 10am. I did not sleep during this time because I was nor comfortable enough and was afraid of putting him down. At 10am we took his temp. 103. Tylenol.
(since this is sleep diaries... that is the night story... note my entire lack of sleep).

January 26th
And here is really what this post is about. Benjamin is still sick. He had a fever of 103.1 at 4pm and we gave him Motrin again. Bedtime was pretty normal, quite peaceful actually and I was proud of him. But he already has been up and inconsolable once. How do you decide which rules to break when your child is sick? Do you just throw them all away and do whatever you think is most comforting to him? Its hard to not pick him up and rock him and hold him when I cannot tell if it is just his normal night time antics, or if something actually hurts, or if his fever is spiking again, or what. How far will these days of sick set me back in terms of his healthy sleep? I don't know. But I can tell you I am NOT looking forward to the rest of tonight.

Results: Holy Crap he slept 6hrs. 9:20p - 3:30a. I was so not expecting that. I woke up at 1am and checked on him. LOL. After that he woke up again at 4:45am. We checked his temp and it was "only" 100, so no meds, back to bed, except DH could not get him down so he ended up in our bed again. Looking forward to him being healthy again...