Are we just settling?

Last night I shared the absolute drama that we experienced during the night.  Here it is in full but you can read more about our daily adventures at one sensational kid on facebook. 

At 3am, still awake I am out of ideas. We did not tell him it was the weekend hoping he would sleep until 7am!  We let him stay up until 8:30pm, an hour later (this is the mistake).

Espen woke at 10:30pm and over the last 5 hours, has torn up my nerves and his room. I lay with him. I yelled. I cried. I held him down while he screamed. I gave him another dose of melatonin. I watched him destroy things. I angrily removed every toy from his room (they won't be back because they never get played with and honest are a huge distraction at bedtime).  I sat with him in the kitchen while he had warm milk & a snack. I listened to him talk. I answered his questions. I watched him wiggle. I left him alone. He moved his bed. Piled up his books. He whistled. He showed no sign of slowing down.

It is like a freight train and I am not equipped to stop it.

I cried. I prayed for wisdom, insight, patience & guidance. I made deals with myself, Espen and fate. I cursed the gods and devils who let this crap happen knowing full well I wasted my breath. I saw my husband googling shit about what we could try next. And knew it was a useless search because we have searched before. We spoke in harsh whispers about how THIS is the hand we have been dealt. How this is who our child is. How no matter what we will have to get up & be on top of our game tomorrow. That Espen will carry on with more energy than he needs and one of us needs to have a fraction of reserves. We softly agreed that at least we are home & have no visitors to deal with the mess.

We quickly discussed how most people can not fathom what this feels like. The fear of what is to come in 6 months or 6 years. The wakeless nights that make us blurry eyed. The fear of deep sleep because we never know when he will wake nor what he will do.

I listened as Doug finally caught him and held his thrashing exhausted little body. I took my leave with a tear and a kiss as he screamed at his dad but settled down to hear a story. And as I lay here I can hear Doug reading (at 3:30am) and I know he is still holding Espen.

This is how it goes. This is a "regular & normal" thing in our house. And this shit sucks. Be honestly thankful if you do not experience these kind of nights. But tomorrow is a new day. A fresh start. Even exhausted we get a clean day to do our best.  And my anxiety about the night I will just cover up because I can show no fear.... 

It is real.  It is very honest.  It is our wild and weird life and I choose to share parts of it.  Today after some text messages about the night in general, a family member suggested that I am settling for this life.  I have thought about it all day.  I was angry.  Hurt.  And in a quiet moment asked Doug what he thought. 

Yep.  I suppose so.  At this moment we have settled for this way of life. We choose it.  And we let crazy rein down upon us! 

 All of us are working with what we have.  We all have some struggles and hard life events.  The ones we face are not ours alone.  We are not alone.  The difference is that I talk about it out loud.  I crack jokes and share personal failures and triumphs.  I am brutally honest about what happens in our life ~ the good, the bad, the super funny and the really ugly.  I do so with intent and purpose.  Because some days it is the only thing left for me to do.  Because living this life is isolating and hard.  Because our story is so hilarious I must share it!  Because if I expose the life as it is in this exact moment, then I might be opening a door to communication about hard topics.  Because some place there is probably someone who finds some comfort in the crazy I write about. 
   
Yes we settle for this.  We choose it.  Absolutely.  There are many children that have ADHD and are medicated.  There are many that have weird and random sleepless nights.  There are many who do not.  We are not alone.  We have explored options.  We see the doctor often and have discussed it at length.  We have to see the doctor.... I have to actually have a paper prescription.  It can not be faxed or called in.  Espen has to be evaluated every 30 days (per our doctor & insurance) for me to actually fill a prescription.  One chemical away from meth.... they better be careful....  So yes we discuss all the options, side effects and weird things with the doctor.  We let Espen have his input and say how he feels.  We ask the teacher for any "weird" she has noticed.  We are not just giving him drugs randomly.  We can expand his medication to include another medication to help him sleep. We can participate in a sleep study.  We can give him booster pills to maintain his behavior longer during the day.  We can give him medication to increase his appetite since the ADHD medication decreases it.  We can of course try oils and melatonin.  We can eliminate sugar, processed foods and caffeine. 

We settle for THIS because we choose not to add medication to medication. We decided at this moment, the best thing for Espen and our family is to live with the other wild things and just give him one medication for one reason a day.  THIS ADHD is not something we can medicate and it will go away.  Nope.  This is his life... he will not "get better".... we will teach him how to manage.  Manage in all circumstances.  This giant issue can be managed better with medication but it will never go away.  We choose to do it this way.  The hardest way possible perhaps.  But already he fights us on taking one pill a day (and he can actually make a choice about it).  We choose to try every single time to teach him how to behave in "societal norms".  We power on with these weird hard struggles because we know they don't happen every day.  We settle on the hard days because one day he will decide he won't need my help, his medication or any of it and I want him to be able to get through because he has knowledge about how to do it with no assistance.  These hard nights and struggles may be "practice" for what is to come.  We are not sleep deprived for weeks at a time, we are not starving, we are managing all the poor side effects to the best of our ability.  WE make the hard choice to do it this way.


It may not be the best way.  Or your way.  But it is the way we do it.  And that means that our life is messy.  It is exhilarating and hilarious.  It is super sensory and wildy energizing.  It is flat out exhausting.  It means we go to bed early some nights and stay up all night on others.  It means we teach our child things you may not ever need to address.  It means we work hard and smart.  It means even when we are exhausted we don't give up or give in.  It means we manage with the most limited amount of medication we can give him and if in the future we need to change, we will figure out that too. 

We never asked for this life.  And we know it is not "normal".  But I guess we do settle for this life in a way..... Because we are deciding not to medicate our small son to fight the effects of the first medication.  Settling for this means we have to stay up all night and awake all day because Espen sure will!  Settling for this means it is OK for us to be wrong and mad and cry.  It does not mean we have given up.  We have settled for this because we will not just settle for the easier route of medication upon medication.  We will choose to do everything else first. 

And maybe last night in my honest ramblings it was not about the fact that we were up again in the middle of the night.  Maybe it was just a plea for compassion, understanding, prayer when mine have worn out.  Maybe I needed someone to hear how angry I was, how isolating it is.  Maybe I wanted to say to other imperfect parents ~ I get it!  Perhaps I just needed anyone close to us to just know we are struggling to just figure out some things and not to give up on us!  Maybe if you passed by our house today and saw 3 happy people outside playing in the snow for hours you'd just silently say "YOU GO GOODMANSON FAMILY"..... We have lots of hard moments.... but we have millions of amazing moments.  We are settled on living this life to the best way we can.  I have invited you to witness them so that you have compassion when you may not have.