The mother who posted didn't give benadryl to the KIDS -- she took it
herself because it enabled her to drop back off to sleep right away after
the kids were done nursing. As she said, it often isn't the interruption
of sleep that is so problematic for new parents, it is the laying there in
bed WIDE AWAKE after the babies are asleep again, worrying about how tired
you'll be in the morning, wondering if you should go ahead and get up and
do laundry or whatever rather than to sleep.
Having said that, I will admit to giving my daughter cough syrup with
codeine in it one night when she was an infant, because all of us (husband,
myself, her) had a nasty upper respiratory infection and were coughing and
hacking and not getting any sleep. I drugged her, drugged myself, drugged
husband, we all slept soundly and felt much better in the morning. NOT
recommended as a routine way to get your child to sleep through the night,
obviously.
I no longer have nursing children, but I still sometimes wake up at night
(have to pee, skunk shooting off outside the window, big lightning storm,
whatever) and I usually cannot get back to sleep. So I get up, watch the
weather channel, read LactNet (!), read a book, watch a video, do laundry,
cook, WHATEVER. I am simply not usually able to go back to sleep once I've
woken up. Usually I go to bed at 9 PM and get up at 5:00-5:30 AM. I once
went to bed at 9 PM and got up at 11:30 PM. Now that's stupid. Sometimes
when I'm going to a conference and getting in the night before I have to
speak, I will take a Nytol before going to sleep to insure that I'm not up
at 2 AM and dragging around by 8:30, when I'm supposed to be talking.
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Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. email:
[log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX 77843-4352
http://www.prairienet.org/laleche/dettwyler.html
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