I mentioned yesterday that we’ve been experiencing some challenges in our house, and you probably guessed that they are (still) sleep related.

Lewis’ sleep has been abysmal. I can’t remember the last time he slept through the night. And each wake-up is scream-filled, violent, awful, and sometimes lengthy (to the tune of 4 hours, on occasion).

We did finally get him into the ENT, and – sure enough – the doctor was on board for tubes. We didn’t have to fight for it, or even gently ask for it. The doctor took one look at his ears and his chart, and we were submitted to the scheduler to get things rolling. So on November 21st, we’re doing the surgery. And hopefully that will bring some relief.

In the meantime, we’re trying to get through the nights with some sanity intact. Lewis is so inconsistent with how he goes to sleep that I never know what to do. Sometimes he wants me to rock him. Sometimes he wants his bed. Sometimes he wants to sleep on the floor. Almost every time, he screams a lot.

After consulting with family (specifically the ones who watched Lewis while we were out of town last weekend), we decided to go against my instincts and let him scream longer when he wakes up. Kyle agreed that he would comfort me and talk me through my panic – AKA keep me from getting up before the agreed upon time has passed.

I have typically maxed out at 5 minutes of listening to him scream, and when Lewis is well, that has worked fine. Plenty of time for him to calm down and get back to sleep. But it hasn’t worked in a while, so we doubled it last night to 10 minutes. Didn’t really help. And he was up at 5am for the day after a second major scream session.

He was down for a nap by 8am, which is 2-3 hours earlier than normal. But he was a basketcase, so I couldn’t put it off any longer. We’ll see how the rest of the day goes.

I’m very excited for the tube surgery. I’m hoping it will help him sleep easier, which will help us get out of “transition limbo” and he will either begin to reliably put himself to sleep, or he will go back to a rocking-to-sleep routine. I honestly don’t care which. I just want bedtime to be less of an ordeal. And I want him to stay asleep. I know he is capable, since he’s done it in the past when he’s been well.

If things don’t change after the tubes, we have a list of other things we’re going to try. But we have decided to keep things “scientific” and not change too many things at once, so we can truly identify what is happening.

12 days until tubes. 12 long days.