Sleep Study Update

Ok, wow. I did my sleep study last night. Can I just say that was one of the most restless and uncomfortable nights in recent history?

I went into it mostly out of scientific curiosity. I believe that my sleep problems are primarily environmental (A + J), with some occasional situational anxiety thrown in for good measure (work + in-laws + J). I also believe that my sleep rhythms are off due to incubating and sleeping with a baby. I know that I snore and I wouldn't rule out sleep apnea, but I believe that is due to weight gain, since I never had breathing problems before that.

I am wary of trendy medical ailments, and I don't necessarily buy that every third person has sleep apnea. I think it's possible that a lot of people do, and I know that it can be life-threatening in severe cases. I have also heard that keeping your weight in check will do wonders to alleviate the symptoms and I buy that. So I am skeptical about the whole thing.

Which leads me to the sleeping situation at the clinic. First, they wired me up. I felt like a suicide bomber. I asked the technician which one I needed to snip so I wouldn't blow up (ha ha, so funny). I had electrodes in my hair. I had electrodes on my legs to see if I have restless leg syndrome (yes, that is a real thing). I had a probe thingy in my nose. I had a monitor on my finger. There was a camera and infrared lights on. It was ridiculous. I do see why they need to do it, but still, it was ridiculous.

So, automatically I am a little anxious and a lot uncomfortable. After awhile I got somewhat used to it but being wired to your bed isn't exactly my idea of a restful sleep. I assure you, I was lookin' good too!

And then, they put you on a sleep number bed. It's not my super cozy Tempurpedic, but it will do. The pillows were a disgrace. It felt like I was sleeping on nothing. They put all the wires on one pillow and I got to "rest" my head on the other one. Oh, and they tell you to sleep on your back. I don't sleep on my back normally at home because it is not that comfortable. Also, I sleep on a fancy memory foam pillow.

I hope that I am painting the picture that there was nothing comfortable or natural about this situation. I was super restless, legs and all. I woke up many times with my throat bugging me, maybe trying to breathe, I don't know. The technician came in twice to adjust the nose probe. I woke up, I'm guessing, around 5am because I just wanted it to be over.

If I am put in an uncomfortable and restless situation, not my normal restlessness, how can they measure what is actually going on in my body on a regular night? Wouldn't anyone sleeping at this angle have difficulty breathing? It felt like it was creating a worst case scenario where they could demonstrate sleep apnea to treat me for, when I think my real problem is more something else.

It will be very interesting to hear the results of these tests. I went in thinking that I was probably on the ok side and just needed some behavioral adjustments. After spending the entire night waking up, now I think I might be totally screwed up and have to wear a sleeping mask for the rest of my life. Ugh. If you don't want to know, don't ask I guess!

More after my follow up in a few weeks...

Some Strange Rabbit Hole

I accidentally fell into a weird deep sleep on the couch last night. I thought I heard someone knocking urgently on the door, so I thought I was forcing myself to wake up. I got up and went to the kitchen. There was a woman in there that I didn't recognize. She was in some sort of hurry.

She told me that she'd been there since the beginning and she would be there at the end. She put her hands on my shoulders, and then wrapped her fingers around my neck. She was telling me something but it wasn't clear.

"Don't ever shop?" I asked, just to make sure I heard correctly.

She looked at me like, no, idiot, and said, "Don't ever stop."

Then I woke up for real. But what does it mean??? Don't ever stop what? Is this supposed to be obvious? Man, I hate it when I don't get the message.

He Likes 'Em Young

Many disturbing things went through my mind this week, and the accusation against Kevin Clash was one of them. Mr. Clash has been the mastermind behind the Sesame Street character Elmo for almost 30 years. He has been so influential in transforming this character that they did a documentary about him called Being Elmo. It's good - you should check it out.

I am an old-school Sesame Street fan. I've watched that show since I was A's age, way back in the beginning. They didn't have the squeaky-voiced Elmo back in those days. When Elmo really started to become famous with a massive following in the '80's and '90's, I have to say I just didn't get it. He was just plain annoying and he overshadowed all the OG characters - Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Oscar, Grover, Cookie Monster...

But now that A is enjoying him, and since I've seen the documentary, I am warming up to the little red fellow. I see how loving he is to the fellow characters on the show. It's amazing how A is taking that example and treating her dolls, animals and us with similar affection. I have to say I almost like Elmo now.

Someone recently came out and accused Mr. Clash of taking advantage of them sexually when they were 16. Kevin Clash is an openly gay man and apparently he likes them young. He responded saying that it was not true, and that they had a relationship between two consenting adults when the guy was 18 and he was 45. There was a big investigation and he took a leave from Sesame Street, although the accuser recanted the story the next day.

There is so much disturbing about this, and mostly I just wish that it had all remained private. His being gay - who cares. That doesn't have anything to do with anything in my opinion. But the fact that he was involved with someone so young to start with, that's the part that makes me a little bit uncomfortable. 16 or 18, it doesn't really matter. The law draws the line at 18, but either way you slice it that guy was a kid. What kid has the maturity for a relationship with a middle-aged man? I'm going to go ahead and say no kid does. It's not an equal playing field.

Ok, so I do get the part about attraction. Lots of men (Most men? All men?), gay or straight, love to look at and fantasize about young people because youth is beautiful and alluring. Sure. But I think what makes the man is whether they act upon it or not. I'm sorry, I don't see how that can be an equal union, or that the older man doesn't seriously have the advantage in so many ways. How could he not be taking advantage of a kid?

Does that make Kevin Clash a predator? I don't know. I don't want to believe that about him because I respect what he's created and how he's benefitted generations of kids. Does it make me want to boycott Sesame Street or Elmo? Not really. I don't see how this scandal has anything to do with the integrity of the show or the character. Should he have so much power to influence children? Again, I don't know. I think that's up to the judgment of his employers, whom I would trust to make the right call.

I do know that he is guilty of some extremely bad judgment, and that he is probably evaluating his actions and how they have affected, well, everyone who knows about this. I just wish I had never heard about it. We need role models who are on the level with us, and they seem mighty rare.

I Will Get You, Sleep!

Prompted by my most recent bout of wicked insomnia, I went to see a sleep doctor to see if there's anything that can be done. The diagnosis was not surprising in any way, and I didn't really expect it to be. Environmental factors and out-of-whack conditioning is keeping me awake - imagine that! Also, there is a small chance I could have mild sleep apnea.

The only way to find out about the apnea is to do a sleep study. Yay! I get to go to the hospital, get all wired up, and have an entire 10 hours to myself, possibly with some sleep involved. I'm very excited. I don't anticipate being able to sleep all that well, and I am not going to use a CPAP machine no matter what, but I'm up for it anyway. I'm fascinated by science and so curious about what they will find out! If they don't find anything significant, I can sign up for Cognitive Behavior Therapy to help recondition me to sleep better.

So, yeah. There's not a whole lot of control over the environmental stuff (ie. J & A). J will do what he wants and A will eventually sleep the whole night through, I'm sure of it. I could definitely help myself out by losing weight. Exercise is good for the bod and a healthy weight is good for the breathing at night and the energy in the day. Makes sense, right?

We shall see. Full report at the end of November.

Too Much Nurse

I am remembering two years ago today, Oct 30, 2010. The girl was 4 days old, and we had finally been transferred from the NICU to the family rooms in Intensive Care, with the expectation that we'd be going home soon. It was going to be our first night staying together as a family.

When regular babies are born, their parents take them home and they are all together from the get-go. We had a different kind of start, one that was strange, dramatic, stressful, scary and confusing. That's just how it is when you have a baby with complications. She was immediately whisked away and hooked up to monitors. I didn't even get to see her until hours later, and didn't get to hold her until the next day. We had to get permission from the nurses to handle our own child, and the nurses and their styles changed with every shift. It was frustrating.

So needless to say, we were so relieved to be finally able to be near her. She was still hooked up to monitors, and we weren't allowed to sleep with her, but we were able to feed her, hold her and love her, and be a family for the first time.

The evening shift change brought a new nurse. She was friendly and enthusiastic, and we thought we'd all get along just fine. This nurse was very diligent. She was in every hour, or even more often, to test A's vitals, which involved a bunch of unpleasant things like pricking her foot to check her iron, temperature under the armpit, weighing her, checking her oxygen, checking her food intake and just generally handling her.

Now, I'm no medical expert, but I'm pretty sure that's too much nurse. She would walk in at any time. I would have my shirt off pumping breastmilk or trying to nurse and she would just throw the door wide open without warning. She told us not to hold the baby, that if she needed to be held to call her. Really? The parents can't hold their own child? I don't think that's correct. I began to think she was a little obsessed and that put me ill at ease. Not a lot of sleep or bonding that night, for any of us, needless to say.

I did finally lay down and rested about midnight. I was at peace for about 45 minutes when the door comes flying right open. It was my favorite nurse. I pretended not to wake up, but she came right over to my face and said to me "Look, I'm a cat!". The clock strikes midnight on Halloween and the place goes nuts, I guess. She was lucky I didn't punch her in her cat neck.

What could have been a nice peaceful night was a total nightmare and I was edgy and irritable, but totally happy when the shift changed again. The morning nurse did her job, and gave us space. She also got us discharged from the hospital!

We took our sweet baby girl home on Halloween 2010, and we have never looked back, except for some un-fond memories of a particularly bizarre nurse experience.

The Blessing and Curse of the Television

Lately, A has gotten an introduction to the almighty television, thanks to her daddy. I'm not exactly thrilled about this development. I think the less TV a small person (and a big person for that matter) gets, the better. I can see the educational and entertainment benefits for sure, but I can also see a habit developing that I don't like.

She is obsessed with characters now. She wakes up talking about them, she talks about them all day, and if we do turn on the TV so she can watch, she talks about it all during the show. She talks about it until the moment she closes her sweet eyes at night.

This is what is sounds like, in rapid succession:
"Watch Elmo?"
"Watch Grover?" (pronounced gopher)
"Watch Dora and monkey?" (pronounced dowa)
"Watch Bert and Ernie?" (pronounced but and uhnie)
"Watch Cookie?" (pronounced kucky)
"Watch Gabba?"

When you tell her they are not on, or that you aren't going to turn them on, you get the whole list, over and over --
"Elmo off?"
"Grover off?"
etc.

At the end of the day when you tell her they are sleeping, same thing. She needs to confirm that they are all indeed sleeping and no one is still awake to spend some time with her. So funny.

To our credit, we don't use it as a babysitter, at least I don't see this happening when I'm home. I suspect it might happen a little bit when daddy is home alone with her. We watch with her, and we talk about what's going on. We play the games and dance with her, so it's an interactive experience overall. More and more, though, she is becoming immersed in it, and she zombies out. This worries me a little bit.

One great thing about TV is that she is a little sponge, and if the program is positive, she drinks it all in, processes it, and repeats it over and over and over. The other day I heard her reading books in her room and she was saying "six, six, six". I went in there to discover her pointing at the number six. That was the number of the day on Sesame Street the day before. The benefit of watching is that I know she is learning.

She will learn about anything she sees, which is also why I won't let J watch horror movies or shows with adult content when she's around. She just doesn't need those images in her mind! I don't know how much harm it does, but I know it can't be much good.

I have two main objections to TV watching. One, I don't want her to become a fat, lazy, zombie couch potato. I want her to be active and interested in all the world, not just a flat box inside the house. This is especially challenging in the cold weather, I can see that already.

My other objection is that I do not want her to become a victim of marketing and commercialization. I don't want her to grow up having to have all the trendy toys and be obsessed with whatever the marketing machine is feeding to her at that moment. I want her to explore and find her own interests, not just be a demographic for someone to make money from. That part of our culture makes me sick! J doesn't feel as strongly about this, but I do. It's going to be quite the trick to navigate this as the materialistic current is so powerful.

I can't ban her from TV altogether, or I guess I could, but J would never agree to that. We will find a happy medium. The experts will tell you no more than 2 hours of screen time a day for a 2-year-old. I will stick with this when we're home together. When I'm not home with her, I don't have control over what happens, but I can work to strike the balance as much as possible.

Oh this is such a delicate dance!

Tale of a Super Reader

One of the sure signs that A is our real daughter is her incredible love for reading. She has loved looking at books since she could sit up, and now that she is having a language explosion, she is even more obsessed with reading. We hear her babbling excitedly to herself, reading book after book, for up to an hour at a time. That's a lot of concentration for such a young person! Her babbling is increasingly becoming coherent and now we hear words and phrases and even sentences popping out. This warms our hearts like nothing else.

Both J and I are lifelong avid readers. We have always read everything we can get our hands on. We spent the first few years of our relationship trolling bookstores, sharing stories and reading together. I think this is so romantic. I was always very studious with a passion for the English language and, proudly, a great speller. J was the kid who was constantly being busted for reading with a flashlight under his blankets after he was supposed to be asleep, and reading books way beyond his age range just to educate himself.

I have high hopes that A will follow in our footsteps. She may not be the most physical or athletic person due to her heart condition, but maybe she will be smart and studious. I think this will set her up well for life. We intend to encourage her curiosity and indulge her with piles and piles of books. Oh the storytimes we will have together!

I don't know if this kind of thing is hereditary, or maybe it was some kind of good karma match, but it is just one more indication that we were meant to be together.