Left Coast Mama » vacation

2800 Miles and Still No Sleep

Gwen — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:25:56 +0000

If you know me personally you would know that there have been some sleep issues with my son Aidan for a long time. This is never so evident as when we travel. He doesn’t sleep in the car like a normal child and there is almost no way that he will shut his eyes on an airplane. When we went back to home this summer we had to deal with the normal issues, the 4 hour time difference, the new surroundings, the sets of Grandparents and Great-grandparents, and the cost. It is a big deal to head home.

In order to save us a huge amount of money (this was the first time going home to Nova Scotia that we had to pay for a seat for Aidan) we ended up taking an evening/over-night flight. We were a little apprehensive, especially knowing our child’s seeming inexhaustible manic energy when he doesn’t go to bed and the proper time. We know that on a usual night the window is anywhere from 7:15-745 pm. If you miss the window things just go bad. So 10 hours travel time, the missing of the bedtime, and reaching our destination by 7 am local time (3 am body time) we knew we were in for an interesting time. We were right.

The first flight between Vancouver and Edmonton wasn’t too bad and we weren’t too worried about getting Aidan to sleep. We had a few hours in the Edmonton airport between flights and we figured we would get into his pjs and let him play until we got on the plane. (Ok we thought we might give him some GRAVOL and hoped that might give him the push he needed to sleep on the plane, but he was having none of it.) That went out the window when we realized that the play area was cordoned off for repairs and the rest of the airport was stuck in the seventies. So instead Aidan ran around the airport pulling his Thomas the Tank Engine bag. I have to admit he was just about the cutest thing around especially when he got tired of waiting for the plane and decided to go down the gangway anyway.

Aidan was really good on the plane to Halifax but maybe slept about 1 hour the whole time. When we got to NS we hoped (again in vain) that when we got to the house he would sleep. Wrong again! It was at least another 5 hours before he finally fell asleep. We then did the 2 hours asleep four hours up dance for the next 36 hours or so. Oh How I wish we had a child who slept anywhere.

Any tips for the travel weary?

This post is part of the Parent Bloggers Network “Pack Your Bags, Pick the Place” Blog Blast sponsored by PickPackGo.

Long Time Away :)

Gwen — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:52:08 +0000

We have been in Nova Scotia for the past two weeks and it has flown by. While we haven’t done too much but visit with family, Anthony and I have taken advantage of the built in babysitters to get some time for us. We actually got to do a bit of gecaching and actually managed to double our cache count. Of course this was helped by getting 40 caches along “Easy street” the 333 between Prospect and Peggy’s Cove. Lots of fun.

I will post some more later this week. Anthony left for home this morning and Aidan and I are staying another week. I am not sure how this will go as we haven’t been apart as a family as of yet. I am hoping bedtime will go smoothly. Wish me luck.

Home for a rest, not likely.

Gwen — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 03:57:00 +0000

So if you are among the few people who read my blog you may have wondered if I fell off the face of the earth. Hmm, well I didn’t exactly, but I did spend two (mostly) wonderful weeks on the other side of the country. Now you may think that I should have posted as “Right Coast Mama”, and you would be right, I should have, but I didn’t. So, what to do? Well I guess that a recap will be forthcoming, but not tonight. I still need to decompress and Aidan isn’t adapting well to being back home. I think it will take us quite a bit of time to getting him back into his routine.

The main problem is, yes you guessed it, sleep. He seems to be having separation anxiety especially in the middle of the night. He has been waking up at 3 or 4 am and then he just wants to cuddle. He isn’t ready to be awake, he doesn’t want to play, all he wants is to be as close to me as he can. The odd thing is that when this ever happened before he always wanted to nurse. Now he just wants to be close. It is harder to get him to sleep after this happens when we aren’t nursing. I guess it is me that is missing it.

It is really funny to me that I can miss something that I was sure was going to be a bit of a chore that I would do for six months or until he bit me. Eighteen months later and I am mourning that fact that he is weaning. Sigh.

Anyway, as I am falling asleep at the laptop, I should let you dear readers (my that was presumptuous of me,) go, and bid you adieu. Good night.

Tags: Sleep, Vacation, Breastfeeding, Weaning