Go the Eff to Sleep: Stuff We've Tried That Worked for a Little While

We're tweaking his meds again.  He's not sleeping.  It's a cycle.  We see his developmental pediatrician--a wonderful woman who actually listens and understands that three hours of sleep a night is not sustainable--and she tries to fix it for us.  She changes up his meds and he sleeps well for a couple of weeks.  Then we're back to the midnight madness.  This time, she's ordered a EEG and a sleep study so we can get a better idea of what the eff is going on.

I'm going to stab my eyes out with these knitting needles.

We've tried it all.  Here's a list, in no particular order:

1.  Melatonin as a verb.  It is a verb in our house.  An active verb:  Did you melatone him?  A passive verb:  Has he been melatoned?  The answer is yes, and it doesn't friggin' matter.  It does nothing for him anymore.  (Knocks me on my ass, though.)

2.  Meds.  Clonidine, Tenex, Risperdal.  As I mentioned before, they work for a little while and then quit.  My husband and I try to squeeze all our movie-watching into those few days.

3.  Sleep CDs.  We once burned out a cd player playing Sleeping Through the Rain on repeat all night for months on end.  Don't think the boy noticed, but it worked really well on me, which is why I will never go to one of those hypnotist shows.  I'd be that crazy bitch on stage clucking like a chicken and then denying it later.

4.  Driving around in the middle of the night.  When the boy was still light enough to carry from the car without waking, I'd take him on drives.  I once came upon an animal convention in the middle of the road.  I swear, there was a deer, a raccoon, a possum, and a rabbit, and I think they were discussing something important before I interrupted them.

5.  Epsom salts baths.  This is a cheap solution, and if he drinks the bathwater, it's a natural laxative.  Our local store stopped stocking the plain kind, so we tried the chamomile and lavender salts, which made the boy smell like my Aunt Agnes.

6.  My nightshirts.  For two glorious nights in a row, the boy brought one of my nightshirts to bed with him and slept all the way through.  He likes my nightshirts because they all have cartoon characters on them.  (How does my husband resist me?  I have no idea.)  I think he was reassured by the Mommy smell.  For two nights at least.

7.  Videos.  Good Night, Gorilla.  Good Night, Moon.  Raffi.  You name it, we've tried it.

8.  Grandma's House.  Every once in a while, my in-laws will take pity on us, and take our kids overnight.  (Those nights are the best because we sleep like it's our job.  We pull down the shades, take some Tylenol PM, and it's Enter Sandman.  We take this opportunity seriously.)  Then we find out the next day that the boy slept just fine.  I'm convinced my mother-in-law is some kind of white witch.  Or maybe it's their Tempurpedic mattress.

So...whatcha got?