Middle of the Night Misery

When we became parents, we knew there would be some sleepless nights. The thing we didn’t think about was how being puppy parents and person parents would combine to create not just sleeplessness, but middle of the night misery.

This past weekend we noticed that Yukon was scratching quite a bit and losing a lot of hair. I called mom and randomly said, “Do you think Yukon could have fleas?” Her response, “No way. You guys don’t have fleas up there, it’s too cold.” Some friends said, “He’s probably just getting itchy with the change in the weather. Try feeding him some vegetable oil or fish.” Reassured, we added some canned salmon to Yukon’s food and attempted to move on with life. Our attempt was not very successful, he still woke us up multiple times in this middle of the night with his intense scratching, but at least we tried.

Monday evening, worried about Yukon’s scratching, I looked closely through his fur. Fleas were found. No clue how they got there, but at that point the cause was irrelevant and the solution was the only thing to worry about. Kyle rushed out to the store to see if they had anything to help with the fleas. I put Will to bed and started vacuuming the house. When Kyle returned we gave Yukon a flea bath, threw out his dog bed, washed all of our sheets, and vacuumed every nook and cranny of the house. We finished barely before ten and headed to bed exhausted.

Not long after climbing into bed I drifted into sleep, only to be wakened with Will’s cries. Kyle deftly got Will back to sleep, but I was wide awake. I got out of bed and made myself some sleepytime tea, which usually does the trick. However, when I returned to bed I was pestered by Yukon’s relentless scratching. Every time he scratched it felt like our house was going through an earthquake. At around midnight I decided to go sleep upstairs in Will’s room. I rolled out my exercise mat, threw Will’s quilts on top of me, and conked out.

All was well until three in the morning. I woke up hearing a really weird cough. When I got to Will’s crib I discovered that he had thrown up all over his pjs and his crib. Commence operation clean up. Eventually Will was put back down to sleep. Unfortunately, it took him an hour to fall fully back asleep, so I was up the whole time listening to his rustling and whimpers.

4am to 6am, those were the good times. I got two solid hours of sleep then. The peace was cut short by Will throwing up again at 6am.

Despite the absolutely miserable night, these two bring me so much joy. I miss the days when I could fall asleep in my cozy bed and sleep uninterrupted for as long as I wanted, but I wouldn’t trade these two in for all of the uninterrupted sleep in the world.