In the Middle of the Night

I remember hearing stories from other parents who panicked when their relatively newborns slept through the night unexpectedly, waking up and rushing to check that they were OK and nothing bad happened. That never happened to us, either because our children never slept that darn well at an age where we would have panicked, we were too exhausted to notice or we were just more relaxed in our parenting style (or some combination of the three).

As time has passed with Teddy, though, we've worked through many times that he's awake in the middle of the night or wee hours of the morning. Sometimes he's crying, sometimes he's just whimpering and sometimes he's kicking the walls. (Yeah, that is annoying to say the least.) Teddy cannot leave his room on his own for his own safety. (Left to his own devices, he could elope from the house if he unlocked the garage, got in a vehicle and used the garage door opener to open the doors. He's done exactly that, just not in the middle of the night).

Since he's non-verbal, there's also no way for him to call to us to let us know if he had a bad dream, if he's thirsty or, most importantly, if he's not feeling well. So we're left to guess, when we're half asleep, whether it's something that requires us to check on him.

You might think the natural thing to do as a good parent is always to check to make sure he's OK. But, with Teddy, it's not uncommon for him to be awake at night. Us intervening when nothing is wrong can turn into Teddy deciding it's morning and that we should go downstairs to play. That's not what we want at 4 a.m.

So, unless he's hysterical, it's a guessing game where intuition is the only advantage we have. Sometimes he's only whimpering, but I'll have a nagging feeling and check to make sure he doesn't have a fever. That's how we've discovered a few illnesses that completely shift our plans for the day because a fever immediately puts Teddy at risk for a seizure.

Sometimes, though, that nagging feeling is worry rather than intuition. That still results in one of us laying by him until he falls back asleep because checking on him and just heading back to bed results in hysterics as soon as we shut his door.

This morning, it was worry. That's why I'm writing this at 4:30 a.m. Dave volunteered to lay with him, so I can still meet my friends to run at 4:45 a.m. (Yes, we know we're crazy.) Such is life with Ted.

This camera can't tell us whether Teddy's sick. That takes the human touch.