Musical Beds (But with coughing instead of music) (Babble)

I think compared to many families we’ve had fewer issues concerning bedtime.  I didn’t have a lot of choice when my husband was deployed both times about establishing some sweet routine with stories, etc.  I had too much to do and I was too exhausted all the time, so I simply got my kids trained early to put themselves to bed.  We read, we cuddle, we do all kinds of nice together things, but we tend to do them before bedtime.  Bedtime here consists of us saying, “Go to bed.”  And they go upstairs and get undressed and brush their teeth and go to bed.

My girls have always been very happy in their own beds.  Even when they are sick or there is some reason for them to come snuggle up on my bed for a while, they tend to want to go back to their own space to finally sleep.  When they were small I never let them cry in their cribs or their beds because I wanted where they sleep to always feel like a safe, comforting place to be.  I don’t know if that really worked or if the outcome I was hoping for was just a coincidence, but here we are.

For Quinn it’s always been a different story.  He was born during the first deployment and I don’t think remembered his dad very well when he returned from the second.  My son is attached to me in a way that straddles the line between charming and overwhelming.  When his dad was gone, Quinn wanted to sleep in my bed.  There was room and I didn’t mind.  But he would still sleep in my bed every night if he could, even though now with his dad home there really isn’t room.  We started moving him after he fell asleep to his bunk bed, and that worked for a bit.  However, he’s lonely in his own room so we got him a little mattress for the floor of his sisters’ room.  The girls are not thrilled with it, but they let it slide because they know it makes him happy.  He loves being part of the action as they all giggle past lights out, and he was good there.  For many months with this arrangement I was able to say that all my kids stayed in their own beds at night.



But the amazing thing about raising children is the lack of absolutes.  You may think this kid is a good eater, or that one is fearless, or the next one is fine sleeping in his own bed at night, but wait a day.  Everything can change and then you have a whole new list of habits and preferences to deal with and that becomes the new normal.

So right before Quinn’s tonsillectomy he was having trouble sleeping and started showing up in our room at night.  He couldn’t sleep and he wanted to curl up with me.  It was hard to refuse so I didn’t try, but it’s hard to even describe how our quality of sleep has suffered.

The worst nights are when the dog is in the bed, too.  Because at first I’d have Ian trying to sleep on one side, Quinn on the other, and the dog sort of flopped on top of me or between my knees or wedged somewhere odd.  That whole arrangement makes me claustrophobic.  Especially since Ian, Quinn, and the dog all have a habit when they are unconscious of filling any gaps around me.  If I shift, they shift with me to remain in contact with my body.  It reminds me of something I read a long time ago about how people buried in sand end up crushed and suffocated because when they exhale and create a gap the sand fills it in and leaves less space to inhale each time.  Quinn is like a sweet-cheeked mound of sand next to me in the bed.  Sometimes we make Quinn sleep in the middle, and that helps somewhat because I have an escape route that way, but it’s still not great.

After Quinn came home from the hospital he was extra needy about wanting to snuggle with me at night, and really, a sick kid kind of trumps everything.  So there have been many awkward nights around here, because even though now he’s better he doesn’t understand why he can’t stick with this new habit.  And somewhere between midnight and five in the morning Quinn winds up in our bed.  When we can, we wait for him to pass out and we move him back to the girls’ room, but when you’re exhausted there are many nights it just seems easier to stick it out.

When it’s too much, either Ian or I flee.  Usually to the couch downstairs.
The added twist to all of this lately is that I’ve been really sick this past week.  Ian’s consultations with Dr. Internet seem to conclude it’s acute bronchitis, but I’m on the upswing.  I’ve been through an unholy amount of kleenex and have been coughing like mad but I’m finally feeling stronger and should feel like myself again soon.  Quinn and Mona have been coughing a little bit, and Aden has had a cough for about a month but otherwise they all seem fine.

The hilarious thing about all the coughing (because you take humor where you can find it when you are sleep deprived and sick) is that it worries the dog.  Chipper is like some nervous hypochondriac, and anytime someone coughs he gets up and leaves.  So at night he’s been up every few minutes trying to settle into a cough free zone.  He’ll start off in our room until I cough, then he’ll trot down the hall and curl up on his dog bed in the kids’ room until Aden coughs, then he return to us. 

The other night it got so bad Chipper decided to give up on family togetherness completely and took up sleeping on the couch.  Which works great until I end up down there if Quinn’s in suffocate mommy mode.  The dog looked so devastated the other night when I showed up in the living room with my pillow I thought me might muster the ability to speak just so he could say, “Nooo!”

The winning night of uncomfortable sleep improv was when I fought my way out of the heap of Ian/Quinn/dog madness and tried curling up with Aden.  She was vaguely awake and I asked if she’d mind and she looked happy to have me, so I put my pillow at the end of her bed and hugged her feet for a while.  After a few minutes Mona realized I was there and started to come over too, because boy didn’t that sound like fun to all pile into Aden’s twin bed for a sleepover.  I told her I’d snuggle up on her bed next time (even though Mona’s tightly tucked system of many covers seems almost as claustrophobia inducing as my overcrowded bed).  This worked for maybe an hour when I gave up and headed for the couch again, which I really don’t like because it does nasty things to my shoulder for some reason.

So there’s that.  We’ve been at this for so many weeks now that it feels routine but I’m so tired of it!  Or just tired.

Last night when Quinn appeared in our doorway right at bedtime I was able to say no.  At 2:00 a.m. I admit to not being able to think clearly about reasonable parenting ideas, but Quinn was trying to shift things into a newer even less fun routine and I had to send him back down the hall.  He looked so hurt I could barely stand it, and when he curled up on his little mattress he started to cry.  But I let him cry.  I have never been a ‘cry it out’ mom, and I certainly never expected to have to employ that strategy with a five-year-old, but every day (and every night) can bring something new in this parenting game.

Quinn still ended up in my bed around 4:00 a.m. but it wasn’t bad.  Every time I had a terrible coughing fit he put his little arm around me.  I was sick enough that I don’t think I had much chance of sleeping anyway, and it was nice to feel adored even in my least appealing moments.

But I’m looking forward to a day in the near future when I can take breathing for granted again, and if I’m very lucky, get back to a routine that involves everyone sleeping in their own designated spots.  Lofty goals, I know.  Martin Luther King Jr may have had a world-changing dream, but I just want to catch enough sleep to have any old dream at all.  (Even that one where you show up at school and you’re naked or don’t remember what your classes are.  Sounds awesome about now.)

A Call Nobody Wants to Get (Babble)

“Quinn is having some kind of seizure here in the school office and we’re calling 911.”

Are there words that would make me move faster?  I can’t imagine what.

I had just gotten back from swimming at the Y and was still in my sweatpants, my hair was soaking wet.  I didn’t have on socks.  I called Ian at the violin store and told him what had just been told to me as I jammed on my shoes and ran out the door.  I left both doors unlocked and the phone off the hook.

Every light was red between my house and the school.  All the cars I was behind seemed infuriatingly slow.  There was a firetruck outside the school, lights still flashing.  I parked directly behind where Ian had parked the minivan moments before, and ran all the way into the building.

The copy room off the main office was filled with people: paramedics, the principal, the school nurse, my husband….  And my little Quinn unconscious on a blue stretcher, an oxygen mask on his face.  I leaned down on the floor near my son and realized I was shaking. 


It’s hard to even describe what a sight like that does to you.  You want to stay calm and can’t.  You want to be positive and your mind darts to horrible places.  You are completely absorbed in the moment and strangely feel yourself slipping somewhere else.  You wonder what comes next but you don’t want to know.

Apparently while Quinn’s class was walking to the library he started acting fatigued and whiny, when all of a sudden he went limp and passed out.  Luckily, of all the people in the school, Quinn happened to be walking next to the nurse, who caught him as he fell so he didn’t hit his head.  She rushed him to the office where they called our emergency contact when our home and work lines were busy (because at that moment Ian and I were talking to each other), then finally got a hold of us.

The paramedics were efficient and very nice.  They recommended we take an ambulance to Children’s Hospital.  They asked me if I thought as his mom I could get Quinn to wake up.

I squeezed his hand and said his name.  His eyes opened a little as if he were very sleepy, then closed again.  I kept talking to him and he opened his eyes a little more.  The first thing that got him to respond to me?  When I asked him if he knew what should be arriving in the mail today or tomorrow.  He answered quietly, eyes still shut, “Latin Is Fun Book I.” *

Eventually Quinn was awake enough to climb into my lap.  He was not very responsive to the paramedics and their questions, but he also doesn’t like crowds or being the center of attention, so we assured people this didn’t look out of character to us, even though he wasn’t showing the kind of energetic signs that they would find promising.  He was happy to get onto the rolling bed they needed to strap him to for the ride in the ambulance.  They gave him a truly all-purpose bracelet that neither of us were crazy about:

The ride to the hospital was blissfully uneventful.  The EMT told me based on the facts as he saw them that he doubted Quinn had had a seizure.  He hadn’t trembled or gone stiff.  He hadn’t lost control of his bladder or bowels.  The EMT said he would term it a syncopal episode–a general fainting.  The last time Quinn was in the hospital it was for dehydration as a result of his being sick.  Quinn’s been sick for about a week, but seemed to be doing much better.  He had one night of fever several days ago, was fine in the morning, and has just had a lingering cough but not bad enough to keep him from doing his normal routine.  Until today.  He hadn’t had anything to drink, and had eaten only a small bite of toast.  Quinn isn’t much of a breakfast person and often doesn’t feel like eating.  Starting tomorrow we will make sure he at least has a cup of juice and a bite of something before we send him off to school, even if he’s not in the mood.

The Children’s Hospital here is very good, and people were helpful, but Quinn was back to his old self by the time we got a room there.  Ian met us, and brought me my laptop and DVD’s for Quinn to watch if we needed them.  Our son was understandably a low priority, as he should have been compared to other children I saw there, but we waited for over three hours before we gave up on seeing the last doctor.  Nurses listened to him breathe, his blood sugar was perfect, his blood pressure was back to normal, a doctor said she didn’t have an explanation but that Quinn seemed fine to her, and that was enough.

(Bored boy.)

We played I Spy until everything there was to spy with our little eyes had been spied.  Quinn ate animal crackers, saving the best animals for last (those being the owl, the turtle, and a mystery animal he decided was a beaver).  We made him drink some juice, and he even had a Pop Tart that Ian had brought along.  But it was time to go home and pick our other children up from school and get some real food into Quinn.  If I really felt the last doctor was likely to say something new we would have stayed, but I just didn’t think it was worth making our day even more complicated than it had already been.  I never made it to work (my assistant filled in for me–thanks Robyn!), I didn’t get any of the projects or errands done when I was expecting to do them….  Hell, I never even got properly dressed.  It was time to go home.

I told Quinn I wasn’t going to go in to work, that I was just going to stay with him for the afternoon, and he cheered.  He read me his books about butterflies, dolphins and goldfish that we picked up at the last book fair.  He ate an egg and some toast.  He drew on his white board and talked and jumped and danced and did all his regular Quinn things.  He was just my sweet boy, like nothing had happened.

So now I’m both relieved and wary.  I’m glad Quinn is fine.  No, I’m thrilled beyond measure that he’s fine.  But, what was that?  The whole episode has left me anxious and uncertain.  Quinn looks great now, but I’m afraid to let him out of my sight.  I don’t think he will faint again anytime soon, but since we don’t know for sure what caused it, it’s not safe to make predictions.  But I suppose that’s true of parenting all the time anyway.

* An explanation about Quinn and “Latin Is Fun Book I”: Quinn reads so well for a four-year-old my mom suggested recently that maybe he might like learning another language.  I asked him what he thought, if he’d like to learn Spanish or French or German…. He didn’t show any interest until I told him there were also some old languages.  We talked about those for a minute and he decided on Latin.  I have no idea what he thinks it will mean to learn Latin or why that’s what he chose, but we went online and looked up Latin books for kids and the one he wanted was Latin Is Fun Book I.  He was excited that there was also a Latin Is Fun Book II available.  We both wondered at what point Latin ceases to be fun.

Today I am just grateful that we will find out together.

(Happy Quinn, flopped in my lap before we even left the hospital room.  Does that look like a kid who should be taking bed space from sick children?  I didn’t think so either.  What a day.)

Mystery Malady Update (Babble)

Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions or expressed concern when I posted about Mona’s mysterious medical malady.  The internet can seem like a crude and ignorant place sometimes, but my own little corner of the blogosphere is a pretty friendly neighborhood that magically stretches around the world.  I appreciate all of my readers more than you know.

So, to recap Mona’s odd illness, she was throwing up between three and four in the morning, but was otherwise healthy and happy and fine.  The vomiting was not particularly violent, but anything that involves barf is unpleasant, and of course we were worried since it went on a few nights in a row.  There was no fever, no fatigue, nor anything else to provide a clue about what was causing it.

When it happened four times in one week we were advised to take her in to the doctor, who ran all manner of tests.  (Blood, urine, stool, x-ray….)  So what was it?

No one has any idea.  All we know is now it’s gone, all of her tests came back negative, and now Mona is gun shy about ever going to see the doctor again after feeling traumatized by the blood draw.  It’s one of those health issues where I wish I’d just left it alone to disappear without ever involving the doctor, but you just never know.  I guess wrong so often about these things because all of my kids’ ailments look so much alike to me, but when it comes to their health I’d rather be safe than sorry.  (Although I’m still going back and forth in my head every night about Quinn’s tonsils.  Most of the time he sleeps peacefully, but anytime he starts to snore I wonder if I did the right thing when I canceled his surgery.  I just don’t know.)

But the interesting part?  Whatever this was that affected Mona is like some hidden epidemic.  I lost count of how many people have asked me to let them know what it turned out to be because “My son,” “My cousin’s kid,” “My neighbor’s little girl” are suffering the same thing.

More extreme versions of this malady have been diagnosed as Abdominal Migraines or Asthma, so if this sounds like your kid, those are things to explore with a doctor.
But most people I’ve talked to it wasn’t extreme enough to take to a physician, which is more like Mona.  She just threw up in the middle of the night and went back to being Mona.  We live in an age of so much information it’s hard to believe it when we stumble across a mystery, but our doctor was as stumped as anyone.

So whatever that was seems to be over.  To other parents out there experiencing barf in the night, you have my sympathy.  Keep them hydrated with something that has electrolytes, pick up some Febreeze, and try to get some sleep if you can.

In the meantime, here is a new mystery to contemplate (but this one should have an answer):

What the heck is this?

It’s growing next to our sidewalk, and at first it looked like it was going to be some kind of melon, but it just keeps getting taller.  (And we’ve had a lot of rain so it’s getting taller very fast.)  I’m no botanist, but I do like old horror movies, so I think it’s a triffid.
Should I be glad to have this thing?  Is it delicious?  Dangerous?  Should I cut it down?  Or should I spray it with salt water before it tries to eat me or my children?

No One Likes a Mystery Involving Barf (Babble)

Well, there are probably a lot of family dogs that would enjoy a good barf mystery, but me, I’m not so keen on it.

Mona has been sick recently, but no one can figure out with what.  She has no fever, she is not fatigued, she’s eating everything she normally eats….  In fact, to look at her in the daytime she is about the healthiest thing you’ve ever laid eyes on.  Yes, she’s a little pale, but she’s my daughter, and my mom once declared me to be the palest person on earth so that’s DNA.  No, if you saw Mona laughing and running around the playground and racing her scooter around the block you would be hard pressed to say she doesn’t look like the healthiest person you ever met.

But!  For three nights in a row last week between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. Mona threw up in her bed.  She’s also had diarrhea, although she doesn’t complain of any discomfort.  Mona seldom complains.  She doesn’t want comfort or attention for any kind of ailment, so she doesn’t even call out to us when she throws up, we just hear it happening and run to her side.  Poor baby.

Anyway, having had experience recently with Quinn and dehydration, we at least know how to keep a kid pumped with enough fluids and electrolytes so that we don’t end up in the hospital, but I called the after hours nurse to find out how we know at what point to bring Mona in to see the doctor.  Based on the fact that there was no fever or anything else going on and that the vomiting was not repeated within an eight hour period, she said it was probably a virus and to just monitor her at home.


Mona was looking so good the first morning after she threw up that we let her go to school.  She loves school.  She desperately wanted to go, so we let her, because it looked like a one time fluke thing and we thought we were in the clear.  Of course an hour after getting to school she threw up all over the art table.  The teacher wasn’t able to get a hold of us because she tried calling our cell phones (which we just don’t use since the majority of the time we are either sitting near a phone at home or a phone at work).  She called a neighbor who brought Mona clean pants, and eventually found our work number and told us what had happened.  The teacher wanted to know what we wanted to do because after throwing up Mona seemed great.  I left it to her, because if she were willing to risk another barf bomb going off I knew Mona would much rather stay at school, but I understood completely if she wanted me to come pick her up.  The teacher let Mona stay and she was fine the rest of the day.

But in the night, again, she threw up between 3:00 and 4:00.  This time we kept her home from school, which she didn’t like, but she dutifully drank juice and ate toast and bananas and looked bored.  I actually told her to stay in bed in the morning, but after her brother and sister went to the kitchen for breakfast she got dressed on the sly and tried to sneak downstairs.  Ian and I heard these tiny little creaking sounds in the hallway, and when I said, “Mona?” she bolted, and I saw this brief flash of purple shirt and black leggings before she disappeared down the steps.  I don’t know if she seriously thought she could stowaway in the minivan and make it to school, but she gets points for trying.  In any case, she was perfectly fine all day.  No fever.  No runny nose.  No coughing or sneezing.  No pain or fatigue.  Just Mona being happy Mona.  That night, like clockwork, more vomit.

Now, at least Ian and I have a system worked out where any kid emergency in the night that involves soiled bedding we hop up together and he gets stuff in the wash and remakes the bed while I calm and clean the kid.  This kind of thing was much harder when Ian was deployed because doing all of that alone was complicated and took much more time.  It’s nicer to be able to concentrate on cleaning up the kid and checking symptoms and then returning him or her to a bed that has been magically made with fresh sheets.
Anyway, we were confused about what to do.  Mona was obviously not well, but didn’t seem sick enough to take to anyone.  It was weird.

Then it stopped.  For three nights in a row, nothing.  We thought, great, it was just a stomach bug, it’s over, hooray.

Then again, between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., more vomit and diarrhea.  At that point the nurse said we had to bring Mona in because she had technically been vomiting for a week and needed to see a doctor.

The doctor was stumped.  She said a virus would not cause Mona to vomit on a schedule, and the time Mona was throwing up was past the point where you could connect it to food or reflux.  She needed more information to decide the best course of treatment, so they had to draw blood and collect various samples.  I don’t know if I feel worse for Mona or Ian, because Mona freaked out and Ian’s the one who had to hold her down for the blood draw and talk her down for the X-ray.  Ugh.  We haven’t heard any results yet.

Normally I don’t share a lot of stories about vomit or poop because, first of all, EWW, and second of all I don’t want to embarrass my kids.  But Mona threw up in class so it’s not a secret to anyone whom she would care about, and as a famous book (possibly Shakespeare) once intoned, Everybody Poops, so I can’t see her world being shattered one day by discovering I told people she was sick when she was seven.  We’ve all thrown up, we’ve all had intestinal distress, so in my book it’s gross but not particularly embarrassing after the fact.

The only reason I’m writing about it now is that I’m wondering if anyone else has a clue what might be going on.  Has anyone known someone with these symptoms?  Last night Mona was perfectly fine again, but I don’t know what that means.  It’s awful to feel helpless in the face of something happening to your children, and I just want Mona to be well.

But since this is what Mona looks like when she’s sick maybe we should all wish to be as sick as Mona:

And in case Mona does come across this post one day and is disgusted by my over sharing, let me show off her latest paper creations that she made for some projects at school.  One is a tiger and the other is a rainbow trout.  (We go through a lot of tape in our house.)  Mona’s amazing, either in sickness or in health.

(I had to snap these pictures fast before she left for school because the rainbow trout she made for her friend, Sammy, and I think the tiger was for someone else, too.  I didn’t know if we’d ever see these particular paper creations again.  She seems to have become the go-to person among the first graders for building props for presentations about animals, so she’s always cranking out something new after school.)