too good to be true

I had the appointment today with other physiologist. After waiting for a while, I find out they failed to mention to me that this appointment was not with the doctor, he doesn't even see patients at that center. This was intake appointment for me to give them a small amount of personal history, less then 20 minutes, and then fill out paperwork to see if I could move on to the next step. Next week Ryan and I have to meet for an hour with the family assessment director. After that appointment then we get put on the waiting list for the doc. Nice, huh. 

I've been warned that this doc is med happy, I decided lying in bed last night that is not a bad thing. Madeline's sleep has slightly improved, but I'm started to see the old anxiety return. Julian had an upset tummy last night, I wasn't able to lay down with Madeline when she wanted to go to bed (usually I just go to bed at the same time as her), to say she was upset is an understatement. She cried and cried because I couldn't lay there and touch her foot. She was too scared to go to sleep. We've been dealing with her anxiety for over 10 months now. We've done months of therapy, spent thousands on it because our insurance refuses to cover it, there was no improvement with the therapy. What gave us the greatest improvement was the listening therapy we did at the Star Center. I have all the equipment for it, we had to buy it, so I'm going to start that up again. If we get offered medication for her anxiety though, I'm going to accept it. Madeline already has enough strikes against her, she deserves some bit of normal in her life. 

water fun in CO

It requires some creativity because the weather changes every 5 minutes here! It hasn't gotten above 70 or so for a couple weeks but the girls are waiting to do regular summer activities. So we came up a solution. Water fun....

followed up by getting warmed back up! 

worrying

Madeline has been averaging 5 hours a sleep for days now. I am going to stop all meds today, they are not working and I suspect one is making the problem worse. Our doc informed us yesterday that she can't help us any longer, we have to go to a child physiologist next. We have one that we used over the summer, fall, winter for play therapy sessions. I was not impressed with him and have not contacted him regarding this latest anxiety issue. We got a referral to another physiologist, I've heard his name around town before, all very good things. I was warned that he was booked out until August, but for once luck was on my side. I called directly after a cancellation so I go in next week for an intake appointment about Madeline. 

I am starting to get quite concerned, I have been before, but Madeline is getting depressed. I spend all my time intervening between her and Gabrielle because Madeline is being mean. Doing things like stopping on her feet, slamming her hands into things, incidents that happened at times before, but now she is doing them all day long and is unfazed by consequences. Or Madeline is melting down into a puddle on the floor every two seconds because she is so tired. She spent half the weekend just lying around, absolutely not normal for her. She wouldn't eat one day saying she was too tired to and she keeps complaining that her stomach hurts. She was up all last night. She started off in downstairs with Ryan and Gabrielle, by 10:30 was up in my room just lying there. She watched a movie in the room off and on during the night. I didn't catch her actually sleeping until 4am, she just quietly laid there most of the time. For a child like her, quietly lying there is not a good thing. 

one month old

Julian has turned out to be a easy going baby. He doesn't nurse nearly as often as the girls did, absolutely refuses to comfort suck, fussing until someone finds a binky for him. He will sleep in the swing for some naps, liking to be held for the rest of course. He sleeps best the first part of the night if he isn't in my arms but laying next to me. Some nights I wake up to find little eyes shining back at me, he is just lying there content as could be. 

He is looking like quite the old man with the receding hair on top!

why I cried today

Do you see it! Isn't it absolutely beautiful? She wrote her name. From memory, unprompted, by herself. That is HUGE, and all credit goes to M. the wonderful language therapist that we have been seeing 5 days a week. 

no magic answer

Apparently there isn't one for child insomnia. Meds are not working well for her. The prescription ones make her tired, but doesn't stop the nights wakings. They leave me with a child who still wakes up repeatedly but is unable to stay awake which is even worse then before. Now she'll wake up for a few minutes, then dooze off, wake up again, repeat many, many times. She is too tired to watch TV even. I'm waiting on the pedi to call me back about Gabrielle's cough (yep, she still has that chronic cough from Jan, everyone is at a loss as to why it won't go away), and then we'll talk about upping the dose. 

round two of meds

Benadryl stopped working last night. I was shocked it even worked for a couple nights to begin with. I'm breaking out the other meds tonight, wish us luck!