Just Go To Bed

The biggest problem we’ve had, since the diagnosis, honestly is traveling.  We usually handle the ‘travel’ portion of the entire itinerary just fine, but as you, my faithful readers, have seen, it’s the overnights that give us trouble.

I can handle meltdowns in amusement parks, and I can handle the Monster’s finicky eating when we’re out and about.  What I can’t handle is a constant lack of sleep.

I don’t know what it is about being on the road – the unfamiliar environment, different beds and bedsheets, the different sounds of a hotel room, or even just sleeping in the same room as parents… but I have trouble remembering the last time that the Monster made it through an entire night in a hotel room without waking up, and endangering everyone else’s sanity.  When we went down to Norfolk for the Tides’ game last year, I spent most of the night afterwards driving with him, trying to get him to go back to sleep.  Same with several of the last few visits to my family, or to other mild overnight trips.

It’s why, in fact, that we’ve not been willing to take them on any kind of real vacation – because we’re absolutely certain that we’re not going to get any rest as a result, so it’s not a ‘vacation’.  More importantly, they then end up being cranky and moody the next day, which does nothing for trying to enjoy whatever it was that we’re off to do.

So as I write this, I’m sitting in the dark in a hotel room, with both children sleeping for the moment.  (The wife’s just gone to pick up some dinner, since the two of us haven’t eaten.)  This is after we’ve given them both melatonin, and read a bedtime story, so we’re somewhat hopeful that tonight, they’ll get some rest.  The problem is that they both also wound each other up after a day at Sesame Place – R is more interested in jumping on a big bed than in going to sleep, and the Monster is easily led to follow suit.  But I can cross my fingers, I suppose, that they’ll at least sleep till 5 or 6…

God, please, just let them sleep…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *