What's the only thing worse than a child that cries himself to sleep every night.......

A child that cries himself to sleep TWICE every night!!

Well, here we are....sleep deprived, baggey-eyed and pretty much clueless as to what could possibly be going on with our little Smurf. Okay, perhaps not clueless, but sleep-deprived and baggey-eyed nevertheless. On Sunday night, contrary to my post, Sam went down for the night with a lot more ease than the previous night...well the first time at least. Sure he moaned and fought me off like the Conqueror that he is (After all, how can we praise him for being a fighter but then expect him to be submissive when it's easier for us?) so after forty-five minutes or so of carpet-pounding and several elbow's to the ribs, he fell asleep. The second time round was also not too traumatic (for us, that is) and he fell asleep quite quickly again. But for about a four hour period, every few minutes, his little body jerked as it does with the startle reflex. And when his body eventually lay still, his little hand kept jerking/making-grasp-like-movements. Now, I don't know if a sensory/reflex problem can apply when you're asleep?

Last night he screamed himself silly, BOTH times he was put to sleep (like clockwork, he wakes up crying at about 9:45pm every night). He thankfully had none of those little jerky-type movements, but moaned quite often. Also, he has this kicking-thing....now I know that rocking, swaying, tapping, etc are all forms of self-stimming...has anyone ever heard of kicking as a means of self-stimming? Well, it kinda seems like that's what he's doing....he'll do it for four or five minutes, even in his sleep....just kicks his legs out in front of him (but they must be making contact with something...he'll move until his kicking the side of the bed, your face, your tummy...he's not really THAT fussy as to what he's kicking). As a family, we said we want to eat more healthy this year, exercise more, etc (Gee...this all sounds sort of familiar) but I think Sam is taking the whole exercise thing just a LITTLE too far....we're not that dedicated that it calls for middle of the night aerobics Sam...or would that be Smurfercising!

So, now we're trying to decide which is the lesser of these two "evils"....falling asleep more calmly but having a good few hours of jerky-episodes through the night...or screaming himself to sleep but with regular intervals of smurfercise during the night. Well, we've received referrals to two OT's, hopefully one of them will be able to help us ASAP so that we'll have a few more "bedtime options" to choose from :-)