Sleeping

Sleeping in a hospital is a learned skill.  The nights when Benton had recently come out of anesthesia, he slept great.  In the PICU the nurses came in every two hours to do a full set of vitals, including shining a flashlight in his eyes.  They also had to come in several times to switch his medicine.  These visits were accompanied by alarms when the medicine was almost done and when it was actually done.  Alarms also went off anytime Benton pulled off a sensor or slept funny, pinching one of his many tubes.  Benton was also required to sleep at an incline, but always turned head down.  I slept with ear plugs.  I would wake up enough to monitor things and get up if needed, but not wake up fully with every nurse visit.

There were a few nights that Benton stayed up for a few hours after a nurse woke him up.  We would snack and be silly in his crib.  The general pediatric floor was harder.  Even though they only did checks every 4 hours and would leave off some of the vitals, like checking his eyes, the nurses would often take a LONG time to come in after his alarms went off, and some were more considerate than others about being quiet and sneaky.  I ended up working out a system that when the alarm went off letting us know the medicine was almost gone, I was allowed to turn it off and I would press the call button.  The considerate nurses were already watching the time and came in right away before the medicine ran out and another alarm went off (that I wasn't supposed to turn off).  One nurse in particular, who had a son Benton's age, was awesome at keeping Benton asleep.  When the nurses got busy, I would be walking the halls as Benton's IV or pulse ox alarm went crazy and there would be no nurse in sight.

The upside of all of this, is that after a few nights, Benton became a much deeper sleeper.  Even at home, he's been able to sleep through me doing his IV meds, and even picking him up just to hold him and squeeze his squishness a few extra times before I go to bed.

In the hospital, Benton HAD to have George and his pacifier.  A week ago he fell asleep in the car on the way home from the park without his pacifier.  I put him in his crib and he continued napping without it, and so I haven't given it to him since!  I'm excited he's off his pacifier (again) after the hospital seemed to really cement it into his routine.