I just realized it’s been a week since we last posted. Yikes!
The last few days have felt rather like survival mode. Little E has awful reflux, so none of us are sleeping. We’re on our third medication now, which had to be compounded and the only compounding pharmacy is 30-40 minutes away. That doesn’t sound like much, but at rush hour and being so tired that I’m not even sure I’m driving in an actual lane, that was a real struggle. We just feel terrible that he’s having to suffer through this, and we also feel like less-than-great parents for not being able to fix it.
In the meantime, the J-Man has been showing some signs of realization that this whole brother thing is a permanent condition. He hasn’t had any negative behavior toward the baby at all. He is starting some attention-seeking stuff, which is completely understandable. It just makes me feel bad when I’m trying to soothe a miserable baby by walking him lap after lap around the house with the J-Man following behind me and looking sad like we’re all in this sort of ‘blah’ parade around the downstairs.
He had a unusually prolonged tantrum this morning about not getting his cookie (which he doesn’t eat, just carries it around until it’s mush) until he had breakfast. (“First breakfast, then cookie!” – didn’t work…) That was no fun on so little sleep. It’s rather odd that our traditionally poor sleeper is the only one in the house actually getting any sleep at night.
He’s also been doing more of the running back and forth and hollering thing, which is a bit like a cross between ‘I’m overloaded’ and his full-body, whirling dervish, stim-fest. I don’t think it’s at a worrisome level, just something we monitor to get a better sense of his overall mood. He continues to do great at school. If things deteriorated there, I’d start to worry that things were heading south on us. If he struggles within all that structure, that’s not a great sign.
Interestingly enough, all these changes seem to be bringing about improvements in his communication. It’s almost like he feels he needs to try harder to get his point across with the baby around. At one level, this makes me a little sad that perhaps he feels he’s being left out, but the communication itself is a positive thing. We’ve also been able to change a few other routines (like bath time) without much incident. So we’ve seen a lot of positives, even if perhaps they are born out of a lot of stress for him.
Of course, all it takes is for our kids to express one of their frequent moments of cuteness to soothe our tired selves and keep us going until one of these days we finally get some sleep and everything hopefully returns to some sort of equilibrium. Until then we have cute kids and coffee!
