Sleep at the End of the Tunnel?

Soooo…  This household has been pretty beset by viruses and bacteria for over two weeks now.  Thankfully it hasn’t been all illness all the time, more like 2-3 days of somebody getting something, and then a 3-4 day break before the next victim would fall.

Things came to a bit of a head though going into Friday this past week, when Bjarki came down with Emma’s cough-virus from a week earlier.  

He woke up at 1 am with a fever and had a hard time breathing.  I dug up an expired can of ventolin (asthma medication) and then held him in front of a warm shower for a good long while to try and moisten up his unhappy airways.

Between attending to Bjarki and then Emma (who woke up at 3:30 am, and 5:30 am-ish), I woke up every hour during that night – and spent a good chunk of it on Bjarki’s tiny Ikea bed (Which didn’t break!  I was amaaazed!).

One night like that would have been ok-ish, except the following night I again woke up during every am-hour on the clock (except 2 am).  Ouch!  (I really, really, really hate illnesses that compromise breathing.  Really.)

I should have spent Saturday in bed sleeping, but Anna had a team handball meet, so she and Finnur were out of the house from 10 am to about 4 pm.  (Anna’s team won one game, lost three.  Which would have been fine if they’d doled out participation medals like they do in swimming, but there were no medals, which bummed Anna out more than anything.)

After all this, I basically threw in the ceasefire-towel, and once Emma’d had her midnight drink, I crawled into the bed we have in the ‘office’, and fell asleep.  (The ‘office’ is the fourth room on the upper floor, but it doesn’t have a door, so it’s not really a bedroom.  It’s called the ‘office’ because there used to be a desk in there, and that’s where the bookshelves live.)

Finnur valiantly fielded Emma during the night, but found out the hard way that if you let her up onto the big bed, she’ll try and crawl on top of an adult every hour or so.  I regained consciousness around 5:30 am (having heard the screams through the night) and saved Finnur.  We then tag-teamed through the day, but there were two pretty grumpy adults stomping about the house throughout Sunday.  (But Finnur did manage to help Anna clean her room, finally!  Oh, that was a relief!)

Last night we repeated the mom-sleeps-in-the-office and lo and behold, Emma drank at 1 am and then I woke up at 6 am and could hear her waking up in the other room.  Finnur had made the smart decision to leave her in her crib no matter what, meaning neither of us was in a mood to wake up to her fussing, so we don’t really know if she did or not.

So here’s crossing our fingers that we’ll have another five hour stretch of sleep post-midnight tonight, and that I can move back to my bed before too long.

(Yes, the smart thing to do would be to move Emma into the office, but I have issues with that.  And there’s no door.)

I leave you with some pictures of Emma: (4 images total)

The next day was unusually warm, so Emma didn’t need the big winter outfit.  Her usual jacket was in the wash though, so I dug out some of Anna’s old clothes.