Give us a clue: night time ailments

We had a duvet day today. This meant comfort food, snuggling on the sofa with a duvet and lots of TV. 

Last night M woke up crying about half ten. In between sobs she said in a wibbly voice that her ear hurt. It’s not uncommon for M to wake up in the night in pain, normally it’s because she has fallen asleep in a strange position and she has pins and needles.

Trying to decipher what hurts and the possible cause when your child (and you) are half asleep requires lots of patience and strong parenting skills.

“Where does it hurt?”
“My ear”
Can you show me where?
“MY EAR!”
“On the outside or the inside?
“Outside”
“Hear?” (ha ha, I actually said “here?”) I went to touch it and she cried it was too painful.

After half an hour of crying, holding on to her head and not being able to establish exactly where the pain was I go get the Nurofen (first painkiller type bottle which came to hand).

I cuddle M for another half an hour, stoke her, pat her with little impact on getting her back to sleep and minimal comfort. She doesn’t seem able to sleep or calm down so I go get the iPad and tell her she can lie in bed watching something. I leave her with the instruction to call me if she wants me. I crawl back into bed, head on pillow for a couple of minutes before Little begins to make whimpering noises in her sleep. These soon progress to her waking up and crying so I scoop her up from her cot to feed her.

At some point during the half an hour feed, M starts calling for me. I send G in and he returns about 5 minutes later. M must have fallen asleep briefly, woken up and was very distressed about why Mummy had left the iPad there. A clear sign she wasn’t well, normally she would be overjoyed she had the iPad in her room. He got M to sleep and the rest of us all went to sleep too.

For the next 3 hours M woke up every so often crying in pain. She spent sometime watching BBC iplayer, had more medicine and around 4 fell into a decent sleep until 9. Today she has had some pain, but has mostly just been tired. I have lost count of how many episodes of Paw Patrol we have seen. There has also been a bit of painting, drawing and dragon hunting in the garden so it’s not all been screen time. 

We think M has an ear infection because her hearing is affected too, fingers crossed she will catch up on sleep tonight and it won’t effect half term too much.
4 figures drawn in felt tip by a 5 year old: 2 girls, a mum and a dad
Little, M, Me and G by M age 5

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