HomeSubhanAllah. It’s 2 am again. It turns out that the reason why Khalid has been cranky, fevery, and screamy all night for the past four nights is because he has a throat infection.
This is the fourth all-nighter that Khalid and I are pulling in the past four days. And I think I neglected to mention that he got his hand caught in an elevator earlier this week. An area of skin about the size of a quarter was scraped off from his right hand, and despite our attempts to keep it clean and well-bandaged, it turned gooey and yellow by the next day, and the fever immediately followed. So that’s when we took him to the ER at 2 in the morning.
Did I mention that we were in the ER earlier this week. It was at 2 in the morning. The doctor looked at his finger. But apparently, not at Khalid’s throat.
Today we saw the doctor again, because the finger was getting better but the fever was getting worse. The doctor took a look at Khalid’s finger as well as Khalid’s throat, and prescribed antibiotics.
Now, I’m pretty sure that even parents with neurotypical children have to battle their kids into taking the antibiotics, otherwise they wouldn’t be camouflaged with strawberry flavor and a pleasant fruity smell. With our collective powers combined, Joy, HF, and I begged, cajoled, bribed, attempted to coerce, and then eventually forced the antibiotics into Khalid’s mouth for two of his three doses for the day. You can guess how that went. By the time we had all had enough, Khalid needed hosing down, the sofas needed wiping off, and HF’s beard had a pleasant fruity smell. I sincerely hope that of the 10ml we put into Khalid’s mouth, at least 5 made it down.
I hope, InshaAllah, that Khalid is feeling better by tomorrow. My work productivity is zero, my email response time has shot up to one week , my brain feels like tofu, and I’m sure Khalid’s tired of waking up and screaming in the middle of the night. Poor thing. When he woke up two hours ago (midnight) HF and I had just gone to bed, and neither of us had fallen asleep yet. HF and I calmed him down and lay in bed hoping he would fall back asleep. HF eventually dozed off, but Khalid’s eyes remained open. I tried to fall asleep, and Khalid did a commendable job of staying in bed for over an hour, but after that, he’d had enough.
He got into my bed and took the pillow out from under my head. Then, he threw it. Then, he unwrapped the blanket from around me and threw that off as well. Next, he took me by the hand and started to pull. When that failed to get a response (I was pretending to be asleep) he took my head in both hands and began pulling. And then he said…
Wemonade.
So here we are. Khalid is drinking wemonade and watching Super Why. There’s an hour and half before it’s time for me to wake up (heh) and make suhoor, so I’m attempting to fill it with productivity. After I’m done typing this mishmash of an update, I’ll answer some work email, attempt to finish a presentation on customer pyramids (BLAH!), and maybe sneak some of the cold pizza in the refrigerator. Don’t ask me about the cold breadsticks. They didn’t make it past 2:15.
It’s amazing how little we control our own lives. I mean this in a good way. No matter how much I intend, attempt, and fight for going to bed on time so I can wake up and stay up from Fajr, Allah has other plans for me. 
This week, we’re on the night shift. Maybe when Khalid feels better our schedule will return to normal, but for now I can’t be sore about being nocturnal, despite how much it exhausts me and hamstrings my productivity. There are far worse things in the world. Alhamdulillah.
Cold pizza, anyone?
August 29th, 2010 at 3:48 AM
Salam sis
Wow… you’re super-mamma to be able to type up a blog post after all that, masha’Allah. May Allah give you all the strength you need, and more, ameen!
August 29th, 2010 at 5:20 AM
All mommas would be super if they knew where I got my super-powers from… cold pizza and chocolate covered coffee beans :p
Super Momma, AWAY!
August 29th, 2010 at 1:36 PM
aw. i hope khalid feels better soon. poor kid, the throat and the finger. i’d be cranky too. and sigh, i’d love some cold pizza at 1 am too when i’m trying to convince hasan to go to bed!
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:07 AM
I hope khalid feels better… E has a stuffed nose and he’s getting up for every hour to be patted to sleep! I can soo sympathize with the kiddo
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:21 PM
Salams Abez,
I pray Khalid gets better and you’re able to get nice long full-night sleeps. Ameen.
I did want to ask about your childrens sleeping arragnement. Do you put both of them together or do you put them in separate rooms or do all of you sleep in one room?
I’m trying to make my life a bit easier by making both my kids sleep together at the same time, hoping that they wake up at roughly the same time as well. I just dont know how people go about getting two babies sleep in one room. I want to get there but just need some advice on how to do it, if you have.
Ramadhan mubarek.
P.S: Allah knows how you manage to make sahoor with all this going on.
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:43 PM
Walaikum Assalams Niqabified!
Actually, we have both kids sleeping in separate rooms, because even when Khalid isn’t sick, we still have sleep issues. Sometimes he wakes up and is ready to go at 1am. Sometimes he cries or screams in his sleep (if he isn’t feeling well) and oftentimes, he kicks. We have him on a mattress next to our bed, and every single night he starts on his bed and ends up on mine, and he wakes throughout the night to make sure there’s someone in the room with him. Maybe if he slept through the night we might be able to have him in the same room with Iman, I don’t know.
But Iman has her issues too, and they’re mostly related to how much attitude that Allah has endowed her with. She sings, cries, bounces, wiggles, and escapes her self to sleep every night. I’ve tried putting them to sleep in the same room before, and they both just bounce around and set each other off and wake each other up. It’s a bit crazy, actually. SubhanAllah
Iman and Cindy (our housekeeper/nanny) sleep in one room, HF & Khalid & I sleep in another. I’m not sure how people get two kids to sleep in one room either.
And we’re up for Suhoor and Khalid joins us with his wemonade and popcorn, and then we pray Fajr and I try to put him back to sleep.
September 3rd, 2010 at 1:43 AM
Hahhaha, thanks for your amusing reply. Yeah, thats how I have it too but we actually sleep in three different places, my older one sleeps in her bedroom, the younger one sleeps in our bedroom and we actually sleep in the lounge. And we’ve been sleeping like this since my younger one was 3 months. She just wouldnt sleep through the night and I tried this and after a few nights she was great alhamdolilah. So now, my first goal is to actually sleep in my own bedroom with her but she just seems to wake up every time theres a noise, e.g my husbands snoring. What you said about kids singing, crying, bouncing is so true, my daughter goes through the same routine every night and I’m just scared if I put these two together theyll keep waking up each other.
But yeah I suppose for now, just let it be
September 3rd, 2010 at 12:38 PM
You know, maybe you should try introducing some white noise? Put a pedestal fan fan in the room, and maybe the gentle whirr-whirr will help camouflage some of the other sounds? Or find an mp3 and play it on a loop- let it be there in the background while she’s being bathed and dressed and put to sleep- it’s not noise, but it’s sound, and again it might desensitize & camoflage.
I have to wonder whether the whole nuclear family as-seen-on-TV sleeping arrangement with each kid in his/her own room and the parents in their is just a myth. One good friend of mine had two king-sized mattresses on the floor and she and her husband and her three kids all slept there until the eldest was TEN! SubhanAllah!
September 3rd, 2010 at 10:44 PM
Lol, strange you mention the white noise. When my older one was under 3 mnths and I used to be terribly sleep-deprived, I searched high and low for sleep solutions. I did follow a routine finally which worked great on her, shower-swaddle-milk-lay down wide awake. But I would used white noise from time to time too in case they were guests etc. For the second one, because shes super sensitive or as people love pointing out, ive made her so sensitive to sound we have to have white noise on for her as an mp3 on a loop. So yeah, I do have that.
Everything you see on TV about babies is absolute nonsense ive come to believe. I mean when the babies wouldnt go to sleep at night and cry for hours, I used to think how come I never knew about this before. I sometimes would wish all of us could sleep together but because it might risk my own sleep, I dont try it.
But I hope all these little problems go away on their own eventually. But for me, what I found the most daunting with babies especially abroad is that on top of looking after them full time, you have to cook, clean wash, iron! My husband is not at all fussy about any of these things and is quite understanding but still I struggle. And Allah knows how people combine work with it too. I have to go to Pakistan after a year because it just gets too much. So I’m going again in October Insha Allah to have cooked meals and washed clothes atleast