Martin Gumucio

First of all, to all parents that has kids that sleep normally. Be thankful for the blessing you have recieved! When I talk to friends that tell me their kids have always gone to sleep at 8pm and then slept peacefully to 8am I am always undecided if I should congratulate them or give them a punch in the face.

I’m starting to write this at 20.20 after putting little prince Aron to sleep. All his life he has been suffering from insomnia of some kind, making both himself and us suffer the consequences. So this weekend we took it upon ourselves to try to change this behaviour.  Since we have a second little baby coming in just a few weeks this is a “now or never” type of situation.

There was two things we needed to change, first he is very used to going to sleep with a bottle of gruel. Without this he cannot sleep. Secondly  ever since he started sleeping in his own room he has been coming to our bed around midnight and slept the rest of his night there. Now with a new baby on its way the prospect of having a wild 2-year old in bed also is not a very appealing one.

So for the past three nights we have been taking turns in sleeping in his room, the idea is that he wakes up, and when one of us is around he find the situation secure enough so he can fall asleep again in his own bed. Eventually he will just fall asleep again without us around.

Today is the third day of the treatment, and it  is the day where results are said to be starting to show. They are!  This morning it was like the sound of music when the first words he said were “Look at the bird! look at the bird!”, he was commenting on the animals on his curtain and forgetting to cry for his mother.

This evening he himself took the initiative to hit the sack, not forgetting of course to put in an appeal to sleep in the BIG bed. But you could already tell by his face that he said it as a joke, not expecting it to really happen.  Lots of work remain of course for this to cement into a real habit, but results are already showing and this is a very happy day.

In other news we visited the hospital today, its right next to the park so we checked out were they keep the ambulances. As we were peeking through the garage door glass, an Ambulance arrived!  And the driver asked if we wanted to enter the ambulance and ride with it into the garage. We climbed aboard and the staff took the time to show him how the vehicle looked inside. It took Aron almost an hour to find words to describe the impact it had on him. It was the topic of conversation for the rest of the day.  ”Spännande åka ambulass!”