Nighttime Wakenings

Nighttime Wakening One:
We were shocked awake by Ava's cries of "Mama! Mama!" We never have to go in to her in the middle of the night, but I could hear the panic in her voice. She had a foot stuck in between the rails. As soon as I got it out she instantly rolled over and fell back asleep. The scary part is that she stayed asleep when the smoke alarm went off seconds later because I had left her humidifier on full blast and coming into her room stirred the humidity up towards the smoke alarm. Logically, our high-tech smoke alarm interprets that as a fire. After turning her fan on full blast and waving a towel at the smoke alarm for what felt like five minutes it finally shut off and we were able to go back to sleep.

Nighttime Wakening Two:
Michael fell asleep quickly the other night because he had skipped his nap. I could hear a lot more restlessness and coughing than usual through the monitor and was a little worried, but not too much. I'm lucky. The vast majority of the time The children sleep beautifully every night from bedtime through to morning. But a few minutes later I knew exactly what I was hearing - the sound of a child throwing up and panicking about it. The mess was epic and involved changing bedding, wiping down the crib, carpet cleaning, washing several stuffed animals, a 10:30 pm bath, and a new set of pajamas. Michael and I were snuggled in a blanket waiting for his Daddy to finish cleaning when round two hit. An 11:00 pm bath ensued, followed by another round of laundry.

I decided we needed at least one puke free hour before trying to put him to bed so we relocated downstairs to pass the hour in front of the tv. Round three hit 40 minutes later, but this time the mess was contained to a single blanket. 40 minutes after that we managed a bucket. At that point I sent my husband back to bed and was hoping to get Michael back into his bed at 1:40 in the morning. So of course round five hit at 1:30 am. My next goal was 2:30. We only made it until 2:00am pushing my goal back to 3am. He finally fell asleep on the floor of the living room around 3am. I left him there not wanting to risk disturbing the fragile peace and slept on the sofa myself.