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| A screen grab from the great video clip I mention below |
Until a week ago, she slept right through the night almost without exception. And by that I mean 8-10 consecutive hours. Now she has taken to waking us up every couple of hours with a medley of screaming, crying and moaning.
When it was an isolated event, we actually welcomed the interruption to our sleep because, after all, it's a form of communication with us. And, heaven knows, there precious little of that.
But it's worn out its welcome. I mean, two hours after feeding C., giving her drinks, changing her diaper and turning on the clip of "8 Hours of Soothing Lullabies", what on earth could be bothering her?
Hubby has been the hero, getting up to give C. water and gain us another couple of hours of quiet. Last night, I urged him to wait and C. actually stopped crying and fell asleep again for a few hours.
Maybe it's just a bad habit that needs breaking. I'll let you know how tonight turns out.
And here's a priceless video clip [via YouTube] I chanced on and urge you to watch. It has people with disabilities advocating for in-community living - deinstitutionalization - for themselves. No non- disabled activists take part in it. And it's even humorous. I hope you'll be as impressed with it as we were and that you'll agree it deserves to go viral.
4 comments:
I would suspect the greatest stress in this communication is not exactly knowing why and being able to decipher what she is trying to express. When the Children were too Young to be understood... and my Mom became too Old to be understood it was exhausting to try to figure out exactly what they needed to express via their own languages, which I couldn't always translate well, if at all. I do Hope you'll find some resolution to have a Peace about the new communicating and that it is not something that is causing any suffering for her that she cannot adequately relay. Big Virtual Hugs... Dawn... The Bohemian
I am sorry to hear of this! Could you possibly be having night terrors?
Yes, Dawn, it's the frustration of not being able to decipher the screaming. And it really feels a lot like when we had babies and relished every precious hour of respite they gave us at night.
So we guess around, take care of C.'s obvious needs, hope we've got it all figured out, and then - boom, the piercing screams resume.
We'll just keep trying new tactics. The latest - giving her 500 mg. paracetamol right before I go to sleep. I may raise that to 1,000 tonight.
Elizabeth:
Ah, yes, good old night terrors. My oldest son had them when he was around two or three and I still remember chasing him around the dining room in the middle of the night while he ran away from me crying. But these past couple of days C. has graduated to screaming/moaning in the daytime as well. So I suppose we have to scratch night terrors. She's really got us stumped.
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