Thursday, April 24, 2008

Can babies have RLS?

Last night there was a storm and we lost power, multiple times. It was quite disturbing to lose the soothing hum of the ceiling fan & the comfort of a/c. The worst part was that when the power went off, the alarm beeped. I think it is a warning mechanism, say someone cuts your power in order to break into the house, it lets you know. Nice feature when someone is trying to break into your house. Not so nice when it is a storm in the middle of the night. The second time the power went out and the beeping started again, DH got up grumbling and randomly started punching the keypad to make it stop. He inadvertently set the alarm with the motion sensors on. A few minutes later, J woke up from the storm, walked down the hall and set off the alarm. The blaring alarm woke up B who started crying "LOUD, LOUD, LOUD!" (When should you be worried about a child's sensitivity to noise? I know he's not autistic or on the spectrum, but he is incredibly sensitive to loud noises. Maybe I'm just going deaf.)

I picked up B and sat down with him. Once he was calm, I tried putting him back in the crib, but that didn't work. He screamed and screamed and screamed. He started running his sippy cup back and forth across the bars of his crib like he was in a prison cell. After awhile I couldn't take it anymore and I took him back to the couch with me.

The guy is a wiggle worm. I would be almost asleep and he would move his feet. I thought he was totally out and he would twitch his legs. This continued for who knows how long. (No power so no clock, it felt like hours. Excessive movement bothers me when I'm awake. It is awful when trying to go to sleep.) The leg twitching, kicking, straightening, curling, flicking never ended.

I rolled over and laid him on my stomach instead of next to my side. I crossed my arms over his legs trying to minimize the movements. That didn't work. Instead I had a 30 lb twitching furnace on top of me. His hands joined the legs and started patting my shoulder. Then he scooted up higher (I think to get out of my arm lock trying to hold his legs still) until his head was just under my chin and his hair tickled my face.

That was the end of us sleeping on the couch. I threw him in back in the crib and let him cry. This time he wasn't quite so emphatic in his crying, more of a moan than a scream. I waited it out and we both eventually fell asleep.

Hopefully we'll get a better night's sleep tonight. I could use it.

2 comments:

Susan said...

Jack is incredibly sensitive to noise, too. Totally freaked out at an air show once. He holds hands over his ears at applause. I've even had him tested by an audiologist. He tested fine, but I know he's very, very sensitive. It's not usually an issue, except it does cause distraction. He can be working on homework and the air will kick on and startle him. He ALWAYS wakes at storms.

Sarah said...

That's good to know. I can tell we're going to have issues as I get older and we watch tv together. We're definitely going to fight over the volume control!