Or, why I should just change the name of my blog to: “my child has been a crappy sleeper since the day he was born and he’s now over two and I am so exhausted I’ve gone completely nuts.”
The latest chapter in the sleep saga occurred when the following things happened:
- Josh got another cough.
- We got a new bed, a coveted Sleep Number (me: 25, Rich: 40).
- We got new carpeting in our bedroom.
- Rich caught the cough from Josh.
- A wicked and endless heat wave settled over the entire state of Maine.
What ensued was straight out of an I Love Lucy episode, minus the chocolate or hiccupping. Josh refused to sleep in his crib. We let him come in our bed (he was sick after all!). The combination of the off-gassing bed and carpet gave me asthma and had me anxious about Josh’s compromised respiratory system. Rich’s vile cough confirmed our worries so we slept in the guest room (on our recently rejected 12 year-old mattress). Josh joined us.
Rich disassembled the new bed and hung some of the foam parts out on the porch and we left all the windows upstairs open for a couple of weeks. It helped a little, but it was still really stinky. Then we bought a fire truck toddler bed, which Josh adored, but was way to exciting to actually sleep in.
We’d all go to sleep in one bed. But Rich would end up on the futon because his coughing was keeping us awake. If I woke up, I might gently lie Josh in the fire truck, hoping he wouldn’t wake up and ask where the steering wheel is (there isn’t one, but he could not for the life of him figure why someone would make a fire truck without a steering wheel). And I’d creep into the guest room where there was blessed air conditioning and somehow we’d all wake up spread out all over the house.
Then we had house guests. This meant the guest bed was out. So we all slept in our marginally less smelly bed for a week and now, weeks later, Josh is healthy and mostly sleeping in his new double bed with a bed rail. Rich is still coughing and often migrates elsewhere in the night. Sometimes one of us ends up sleeping in Josh’s bed with him. All I can say is that at least we’re not trying to squish two into a toddler bed.
