Why do I think this, you ask?
Let me tell you!!
First, background (because I can’t just jump into a story, I have to give background and make it that much longer, right? Right.) Mother’s day was lovely. Tom and the girls were very kind to me and I got some wonderful things and loving words. I slept in, Tom made breakfast, Alyssa got me a bamboo plant that I took to my desk at work. All great things.
Alas, laundry does not care that it was Mother’s day. Laundry sat in the basement in great piles and taunted me. It reminded me that I better not spent too much time at my mom’s celebrating HER because that laundry was not going to do itself.
So I did laundry all afternoon on Sunday, as it my curse. (Let me stop here and say that I don’t actually mind doing laundry. In all actuality, in this day and age, it kind of actually does do itself. One simply loads the washer and then the washer does the actual work. The dryer is the same. I don’t even mind folding and putting away all that laundry. I feel like it’s a labor of love for my family. Yes, seriously.)
Anyway! The laundry was taking FOREVER because I chose to also wash all the sheets that day.
Tom offered to ‘help.’ As in, he’d load and unload the machines but he’s not one for folding or putting away.
He also always overloads the washer which means it take two cycles in the dryer to finish a load. Ahem.
So…I ended up leaving only a load of towels unlaundered Sunday night.
When I got home from work in the Monday after Mother’s day, Tom had washed and dried the last load of towels.
He’d also done a bit of research on bedwetting. He’d done this FOR ME, don’t you know?
More backstory, I wet the bed until I was eight years old. My mom was so great about never making me feel bad about this. It was just something I couldn’t help doing.
Our house is a house of bedwetters. We can’t help it. One of us stopped at nine years old. The other…well, let’s remember that the freaking cards are stacked against her. Not only did she get the bedwetting gene from her mother but also probably from her father (not going there, not this time) but she also, unluck of the draw, was born with a syndrome that causes problems with potty training and all that entails.
I don’t mind washing sheets several times a week. I don’t mind that she sometimes needs a shower firs thing in the morning. She sleeps through it all and that means, YAY, I sleep through it too.
Have I ever mentioned that Alyssa, that darling girl whom I treasure with every cell in my body, didn’t sleep through the night until she was two years old?
I have? Oh, okay, well, there it again, written out for all to see.
And, just for the record, let’s remember that my sweet Olivia, light of my life, didn’t sleep through the night until she was EIGHT (8) YEARS old. Yes. YEARS. As in, she woke up every single night, at least twice, sometimes four or five times for more than TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND TWENTY (2920) nights. That’s not even adding in leap years or that last month of nights from when she turned eight in late November and then, FINALLY, in December started sleeping through the night. Sit on that and ponder how I came out even semi-sane.
Ahem.
So.
That Monday afternoon, my better half had done some research on bedwetting and alarms one can purchase that will go off at the first sign of dampness.
He was thrilled to find that he could purchase one such alarm for the low, low price of $23.95.
Wouldn’t it be great, he thought, if the child who still wets the bed (for what it’s worth, she wears Pull-Ups and they don’t leak all that often) were to learn to wake up when she felt the need to pee?
Sure. It would be awesome if she did that. Not just for us but mostly for her. We want her to have that freedom, that sense of maturity and maybe even, someday, spend the night at a friend’s house without having to worry about the stress of Pull Ups and/or wetting the bed.
And yet…when he showed me the picture of the kid on the website wearing that alarm, I had to hold back tears.
Look at this picture:
Doesn't everyone feel panicky at the sight of that peaceful imp, just sleeping so soundly, alarm ready to BLAST him and the entire population in the tri-state area awake at the first hint of moisture?
The very thought of being woken up several times a night by a screeching alarm for, what weeks, or oh please dear Heaven, no, months?
I can’t go back to that.
We’ve been sleeping well for four years. But those four years haven’t erased the twelve years prior to that when I was woken up no fewer than two, most nights four times every single night for YEARS.
Is it selfish of me?
Probably.
Should I get over myself and do what’s best for my kid?
Obviously.
And I probably will but I had to put this out there, that sense of doom and depression that sets in at the thought of going back to being woken up over and over and over again each night for who knows how long.
I dread it. I feel panicky at the thought of it. It makes me sick to my stomach just considering the possibility of starting those nights of being pulled from a deep sleep, stumbling around, helping her to the bathroom, finding dry undies, resetting the alarm and then doing it again and again and again.
Tom could tell that I was not into his idea. (Yet another parenthetical: He always gets a little pissy when I don’t immediately embrace and applaud his ideas. He’s a little princess about that kind of thing…sigh.)
I tried to explain to him that he didn’t understand my panic because he wasn’t the one who got up with those two demons angels every night for years.
He offered to set up a cot in the family room and sleep down there with our darling until the alarm did its job and trained her brain to wake up when she needs to pee.
Ha. Hahaha.
Right.
He’s a funny, funny guy.
We all know who will be responding to that stupid alarm if we go that route. And it won’t be Not-The-Mama.
I’ll grin and bear it and I’ll come here and bitch and moan about it, because it’s what I do. But I can’t promise to be sane when this is all over. That, my dears, is simply asking too much.
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