Dr. H & Sleep

The last thing I want to do is bore y'all with another story, but I forgot to tell y'all about our chiropractic visit a couple of weeks ago. (And by a couple I mean 7.)

According to Adam he did not sleep during our first year of marriage. AT ALL. I guess something about all the sharing a bed with the love of his life caused him great distress. He does more complaining about his sleep deprivation than I do about going to work everyday. (I'll give you a moment to let the magnitude of that statement sink in. )

Ok, moving on.

Like any good husband he finds ways to blame his wife for this. Since he also has problems sleeping when he is out of town I refuse to believe that me and my 12 pillows are to blame. I think he totally exaggerates this problem, but what do I know? I'll tell you one thing I know. He sure is sleeping good when I leave every morning. I'll tell you what else I know. This is exactly why God didn't intend for people to live together before marriage. If I had known that he was such a complainer about his sleep habits and if he had known I require upwards of 3 pillows I highly suspect we would both be single today. From time to time since that first year of marriage he has slept like a baby (which, really, whoever made up that phrase clearly DID NOT have a baby). Two nights in particular allowed him to sleep with the ease only known to him in his bachelor days. You know, the days before me and my pillows came along an ruined it all. The first being the night I slapped him with the "guess what we're pregnant news." He declares that he was so shocked by the news his body just shut down. Yeah, whatever. All I know is that I starred at the ceiling all night while he snored softly in my ear as though the weight of parenthood wasn't pressing down on him. The second night was when he was introduced to Dr. Harrison. Dr. Harrison is a chiropractor who comes to Clay County a couple of times a week and also has a practice in Oxford. He adjusted Adam a few months ago and I'll just say that Adam likes him as much as any straight man can like another man. Dr. Harrison fixed all of his problems including the elusive concept commonly known as sleep. You can image his delight when he discovered that chiropractic visits are covered on our insurance and that life changing adjustment cost only $7.40. Needless to say his first visit would not be his last. After getting some advice from a couple of veteran parents we decided to load the little one up and take her to see Dr. Harrison for her congestion a few weeks ago. At some point the congestion turned into a nasty cough. So he adjusted her and told us to bring her back again the next week for a follow up. We took her back the next week and within a couple of days she was back to her properly breathing self and sleeping like an angel. Looks like Dr. H's magic has the same effect on Reese as it does her Daddy.

The only thing about taking your baby to a chiropractor is that you will hear about it from everybody who knows where you've been. It was like we took her to a witch doctor. Most people just looked shocked when I said we had her adjusted, but others told us bluntly that we were crazy and needed to take her to a "real doctor." Yes, please lets go to a "real doctor" and drug our baby up unnecessarily. (For the record- we had already been to the "real doctor" 2 times paying a grand total of $60 in co-pays and they couldn't do anything for us.)

I am not going to go into all of this today, but we are having some sleeping arrangement issues at our house right now and we need prayer. Reese has demanded that she sleep in the bed with us or no one sleeps at all. So we have to make a final decision whether we are going to purchase a king size bed and let her win this battle or if we are going to show her who the boss is and make her sleep in her own bed ALL night EVERY night. During the daylight hours of the day it is so easy for me to have the best intentions and say that no matter how much she cries she will not be put in our bed, but it has proved to be difficult to live up to that at 1 a.m. She doesn't interfer with our sleep when she is in our bed, but we have no desire to share a bed with a 5 year old in a few years either. I am the polar opposite of an indecisive person so I don't know why I can't make a decision and stick with it when it comes to this! Maybe it's because I am delirious when crunch time comes in the wee hours of the morning. All I know is that it's now or never with the sleeping in her bed thing. Once she is old enough to call out for me or walk to our room it is going to be too late. So, please, any advice is welcome! Do your kids sleep in their bed or with you? Did you go through this? What did you do about it?

(For the record- I slept with my parents till I was an embarassing age and so did Adam. I remember it being such a security to be in the bed with them. I will not call names but a particular friend of mine thinks that's why I hate staying by myself at night now;) And come to think of it she could be right.)