Sleep Hygiene

For the better part of the past year I have had some serious problems with sleeping, and sleeping well. Many nights I find it very difficult to get tired enough to fall asleep and even if I do I find that when I wake up in the mornings I rarely have managed to sleep in a restful way. As a result I've had some strange experiences with crashing in class, taking six hour naps on the weekends, etc.

Finally after the problem has been getting worse for the past couple of months I decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to go and see a doctor about it. I wasn't sure if it was stress induced, a chemical imbalance of some kind, or something else entirely.

Yesterday I had my appointment with Dr. Wilmore, and told him that I would like to first try solutions that did not revolve around taking any sort of medication if that was possible. The last thing I want is to be knocked unconscious for eight straight hours and unable to help with Jack during the night. He sleeps quite well most nights now, but we still have nights where he wakes up a couple times and that isn't something I want to leave Holly entirely responsible for.

Dr. Wilmore said that was entirely doable and that he often suggests that as the first step for anyone who comes in with similar problems. He then gave me the rundown on what is officially called "Sleep Hygiene" and the basic idea is to condition your body to expect certain activities shortly before going to sleep so it gets into a rhythm each night and you can fall asleep more easily.

The steps he told me to use for the next three to four weeks include the following:

1. 30 minutes of light exercise each day before 7:00pm
2. A warm shower just before it's time for bed each night
3. Reading just before bed, but not in bed
4. A relaxation technique
5. Don't stay in bed longer than 15 minutes if not asleep

I gave it a try for the first time last night and I slept like a dream. I didn't wake up for anything, and luckily Jack didn't wake up either, so the first night was nice and easy. I'll do it all again tonight and see if the habits can start forming for me. It would sure be nice not to have trouble sleeping anymore.

Sick, Sick Jack Attack

This morning we had a bit of an interesting time. During the night we ran out of Jack's normal soy formula because he had been a big eater the day before. We thought he wouldn't have any trouble just having a bottle with Jett's normal formula, but boy were we wrong. Jack drank the bottle just fine and fell back asleep, but when he woke up all hell broke loose.

First he projectile vomited the formula still in his stomach, and then he proceeded to dry heave up the stomach acid he had left for the next few hours. I had left to get new soy formula at Target this morning when the ordeal first started, and when I got home he was stripped to nothing but his diaper and stayed that way for most of the day.

He spent two hours in the bed with me right after I got home, then he woke up for about 20 minutes, dry heaved six or seven times, and then was so exhausted he fell right back to sleep on my shoulder within minutes. He spent about three hours on the living room floor so we could keep an eye on him if he threw up again. Luckily when he woke up from this nap he was a happy camper having purged all of whatever was bothering him.

Showertime!

Last Thursday was a bit of a rough day for Jack and I. We both woke up with some strange cough/runny noses and had a bit of a tough time dealing with it. Both of us were coughing and sneezing and moaning all day trying to get over it. By the time it we were ready to lay down and go to sleep for the night we needed to give Jack a bath, but I decided it might be good for him to take a shower with me because I could stand at one end of the shower and turn the water up nice and hot so the steam could help relax him and make his cough feel a little better.

Sick Little Jack

A couple of days ago both Jack and I woke up with this strange runny nose/cough ordeal that we were not suffering from the day before. I took solace in the fact that I personally had not made him sick since we both caught it at the same time, but I was still not all that happy about the situation because it befell us at a rather inconvenient time.

It was the first day of reading days for the semester and I was supposed to be getting all sorts of awesome work done on my web project as well as several other things to get ready for finals. Instead I was feeling like an inflamed nasal cavity and having a really hard time focusing on anything.

Luckily I made it through the day without too much drama, although I did not accomplish nearly as much as I had hoped I would, and when I woke up the next day I was feeling better. Every day since then I have gradually progressed to a better state, but Jack has not. He stayed even for a day or two, got better for a day, and then last night was coughing and hacking so hard that he was making himself throw up and having a really difficult time breathing.

It was a hard night for me, and I didn't sleep much at all. I was constantly checking on Jack every time I woke up to roll over and probably spent more time in the rocking chair next to his crib to make sure he was still okay than I did in my bed last night. He made it alright though, and eventually Holly brought him into the bed with her which seemed to help him sleep a little bit better for the last couple of hours.

Oddly enough, Jack is scheduled to go see the doctor today for his four month checkup, so it was a bit of fortuitous timing that he didn't get to a really bad state until late last night. I'm hoping the doctor will have some suggestions on how we can help him get rid of this cough and/or give him some medicine to make him feel better. I really hope he doesn't have anything serious. One of the other babies in the ward has RSV recently and came to church a week or so ago still coughing and hacking even though the parents said that the doctors told them he was fine to go out.

Needless to say, I'm a bit skeptical at the moment.

Busy Week

Most of you know by now that Holly and I are moving back to Wymount this coming weekend, which means that we've been spending a lot of time packing and trying to plan things out properly. Holly packs several boxes each day, and then we take them over to the new place each evening when I get home from work. The goal is to get all of the small stuff over there without having to get a massive truck to do it. So far it is working out nicely.

On Saturday morning I'll get the smallest U-Haul available and have a few guys from the ward help me move the big furniture like the bed, couch, and crib, and then we should be mostly done. Thankfully if there are a few straggling items, Grandma Chatfield isn't going to care if we have to come back for them over a couple of days next week. That takes the edge off the stress of getting everything done right at once.

The weather has picked back up, which means I'm back on the Federation of Joy every day, which pleases me to no end. I like being able to feel like Holly has the ability to go somewhere if she needs to, and do things with her sisters or someone without needing to wait for me to get back from campus. The other plus is that by living in Wymount again I can come home for lunch if I have time between classes because the scooter makes parking next to the buildings I need to be in so convenient.

Also been working on a massive project for my CHum 489R class this past week or so. Russell is my technical advisor and has been very patient with me as I worked through a few hurdles. However, the past two days I've managed to clear the hurdles myself as I am finally understanding how a while() loop is supposed to work, and the proper ways to refer to objects and join database tables together. It is nice to feel like I'm learning something and having it stick, even if it seems like it is always a small piece each time.

I have to give a presentation on this project tomorrow morning and I'm hoping that I have enough done to keep myself from looking like a slacker/fool. Russell seems to think that I'll be much further along than anyone else, but until I see that I'm still a little bit worried. The core of the project site is working now, but I'm hoping to tack on a couple of "bells and whistles" before the presentation tomorrow to try and make it a little more complete. I do like the style that I've applied to the site though, I'm quite proud of that. It looks very modern and sleek. Once I have it up on an actual server (curse you slow BYU people) I'll post a link so people can see what it looks like so far.

Let's see, what else is going on... Oh, I was sick, then Holly was sick, and Jack wound up catching a little bit of it, but nothing too bad. He even learned how to shoot snot out of his eye the other day, which I told him was not a skill that we really needed to practice a whole lot if he didn't mind.

That's all of the big news for now, mostly just trying to get my list of things done each day and help Holly as much as I can when I get home in the evenings.