Mad Genius Meets Divine Inspiration...

Does anyone else have flashes of exhausted-Mommy genius in the middle of the night?  I wake up (or am woken up) in the middle of the night with ideas that seem like absolute genius in those pre-dawn hours.  I toss and turn trying to either coalesce the idea or just FORGET it. 


Last night was no exception... around 4 am,  Sean wandered into my bed.  Well, wandering is a polite way of putting it.  I heard him jump out of his bed (his bed is right over my head), pound down the stairs. Then felt him literally bound up to the edge of my bed and dive onto it.  So in a flash of "genius," I asked him "Sean, what are you doing?"  He responded with a disoriented sounding mumble.  I inquired again, "Whatcha doin' buddy?" This time he answered clearly and matter-of-factly, "I'm swimming."

Now, if you're wondering why I considered this a flash of genius, usually I just ignore the guy and try to go back to sleep.  Usually with some half-asleep, mindless  hoping that Steve will take Sean into his room  and back to bed.   The flash of genius is I've never even considered that Sean may have been sleepwalking all this time... that he's not waking up and coming down because of his insane desire to snuggle me and deprive me of precious hours of sleep.  In fact, night after night, he comes down and into our bed, thrashing half the time and  rarely sleeping solidly or quietly.  I've suspected sleep apnea-- but it never occurred to me that there was potentially more going on with his sleep disruption.

Perhaps my flash of insight was a subtle response to my repeated prayer before Sunday mass each week:  "Please God, help open my heart to the blessings of this mass, guide me in my life and help me to be a better wife and mother."   More likely, it was the fact that my mother absolutely pissed me off last night.  When I told my parents that Sean is scheduled for a sleep study at U-M's sleep clinic on May 29th my mother argued with me:  telling me I was being rediculous and why put Sean through this and leave him alone becuase he's fine  [I'm pretty sure a friend has recently had a similar conversation with her MIL about what to do about her child's health/life and is possibly relating to the anger and outrage and WTF feeling].  Anyway... on the way home from my parents, Steve asked me WHY I was doing the sleep study...WOW, thanks for being a parent with me and listening to why I had the pulmonologist go ahead and schedule it (for the record, here it is:).   

We are (as some of you may know) going to take Sean to a Pediatric Otolaryngologist at U-M next week (4/15) [which is fancy for ENT] because I suspect that the source of Sean's sleep issues may be due to enlarged adenoids (which my little sister, his little sister, and I all suffered from).  When Sammie saw the same Dr 2 years ago, she offered us the opportunity to participate in her sleep study prior to surgery, but that Sammie was a pretty clear cut case. It was not required to determine if she indeed had "chronic obstructive sleep apnea" because her tonsils were so large and based on our account of her behavior.  Sean, however, is not such an obvious case.  Time and time again, I've been told Sean's tonsils are not enlarged.  He's a sweet little boy who generally can make it though the day without the rest  of the world knowing he's  a wreck.  He saves it all for us at home.  Aside from age inappropriate temper tantrums,  he's wandering the house at night, has dark circles under his eyes and is diving into my bed more nights than I can recall.  It's also possible that Sean's speech delay (not cognitive, but behavioral) can also be attributed to an ENT issue (this comment was made by his Pulmonologist, I'm not making this up!).  Taking into consideration that Sean may not be as clear cut, medically, as Sammie, I'm getting his butt on the schedule-- has anyone else tried to be a non-emergency case at U-M hospitals-- it's ALWAYS a 6-8 week wait.  If this bumps us up closer to after the ENT visit, then magnificent! I'm doing everything I can prior to the appointment to show, I'm taking my kid's health VERY seriously (and as my sister the nurse said, long term sleep apnea is a major health issue). 

So the point is, if the ENT can find a cause for his potential apnea and not require a sleep study, marvelous... but I suspect that she will schedule a sleep study and the idea that we've already had the allergist AND his pulmonologist point us in that direction lends more weight to that result. Also, I've had a rotten time with our former Primary Care doctor and while part of me has confidence in the ENT (because of how she handled Sammie) there's the part of me that is worried she'll snap at me and dismiss me (yeah, Dr R... you've made me not trust the medical field in general!).

But I've digressed horribly on this topic because my flash of genius did not end with figuring out Sean's dreaming about swimming and possibly sleep walking (this morning, he did remember talking to me but said he couldn't figure out how to describe what he was trying to do).  Sean's bed has had soft, wonderfully comfortable cotton t-shirt sheets on it for YEARS (birth actually)... it's nearly the only kind of sheet we've used.  Have you ever slept on t-shirt sheets? It's amazing, unless  you're dreaming.  In which case, you find yourself horribly stuck in a GIANT wad of fabric.  Could it be, that Sean is dreaming of swimming, running, baseball, etc and tangling himself up in the sheets? Could he be flying out of bed night after night in a massive struggle against the sheet monster (we often hear, "I had a bad dream" as he crawls into our bed)?  Wait for it people, because here's the flash of genius... WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF I PUT REGULAR COTTON SHEETS ON HIS BED?  What if he's  unknowingly coming to our bed because he can MOVE (he kicks A LOT and if you've seen him lately, you can imagine it hurts!)?

Okay, so maybe this flash of insight was part pissed off Mama-Bear behavior and part divine insight and part sleep deprived madness (hence the mad genius meets divine inspiration)... whatever it is, I'll take it. And yes, I'm off to call my mother and see if she has some extra sheet sets she can  loan me and if not... you bet your ass I'm going to buy sheets later!  (Not expensive ones, just solid color, higher thread count sheets).
And for the record... Steve did take Sean back up to his bed last night.