Hell Night Starring Pebbles Stone

Kids Who Don’t Sleep

You’ve probably heard of kids who don’t sleep well, or have a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep. You may even have one of those children living in your very own home.

But unless you have a child who literally cannot fall asleep without medication, YOU. DON’T. KNOW. WHAT. HELL. TRULY. IS.

Pebbles is one of those kids. She lulled us into a false sense of security by sleeping really good when she was a baby. Which was kinda nice and really unexpected considering the hell she put us through during her waking hours.

See my post about Hell Week for a vicarious visit to Hell on Earth.

A Visit to a Different Version of Pebbles-Hell

Pebbles takes clonidine to get to sleep. Yes, The Rock and I know it’s a blood pressure medication. Yes, we know about melatonin, but it doesn’t work with Pebbles. Yes, we’ve tried a warm bath, cozy jammies, bedtime stories, warm milk, unplugging electronic devices, lavender lotion, and every-other-trick-known-to-man.

I’m a skeptical researchaholic, so, trust me, if I resort to medicating my child to sleep, it’s the only option.

Two clonidine tablets put Pebbles to sleep for the night. Which is why The Rock and I worship at the throne of modern pharmacology. Because it has given us back our lives. For real.

So Pebbles has been sleeping like a baby again ever since she was four year old.

Until one night that will live in infamy. At least in our minds.

We have a few cute names for that night: The Night We Ran Out of Clonidine, The Night We’ll Never Forget and Hell Night.

We Brought It on Ourselves, Really

We caused Hell Night by waiting until we had two clonidine tablets left to refill the prescription. But since I had an errand to run the next day I knew I could swing by the pharmacy on the way home and Pebbles would be in slumber land by 8:30 PM.

Except I didn’t know that Walgreen’s closes the pharmacy at 6-freakin’-o’clock PM on Saturdays! Wanna guess what time I got there?

All you really need to know is that it wasn’t by 6-freakin’-o’clock PM.

After weighing my options and deciding that armed robbery wasn’t really one of them (and only because I didn’t have a gun) I started to panic a little.

But then I remembered that (because Pebbles at the time also took a dose of melatonin with her clonidine) we had been considering a melatonin-only trial. This presented the perfect chance to experiment!

At least that’s how I presented it to The Rock when I came home from the pharmacy empty handed.

Remember how I said that melatonin doesn’t work on Pebbles? That was the night we figured that out.

After trying everything we could think of to get Pebbles to go to sleep we admitted defeat and agreed to take shifts. After all, how long could she stay awake really?

The Answer is 30 Hours. No Joke.
THIRTY. STRAIGHT. HOURS.

Wide awake. Not slowing down. At. All. In fact, I’d swear she had an internal generator that was fueled by motion.

And the more energy it produced, the more hyperactively-maniacal Pebbles became.

Around 3 AM The Rock and I decided to turn off all the lights, leave the TV on a continuous cartoon loop, pile the coffee table with snacks and go to bed. And pray that we’d hidden the flammable and sharp stuff well enough that Pebbles wouldn’t find them.

We both have vague horrible memories of the rest of that long, looooong night. Several times Pebbles used our bed – and us – as a trampoline. I think she read numerous books to us because we were both covered with a humongous pile by morning.  She dashed madly in and out of the bedroom about a hundred times, talked non-stop, laughed maniacally, then found a flashlight and used us to study the science of pupil dilation.

When we emerged from our bedroom the next morning, guess what we found?

You thought I was gonna say we found Pebbles passed out on the floor surrounded by a pile of empty snack wrappers and juice boxes, didn’t you? Did you forget about the THIRTY. STRAIGHT. HOURS?

Pebbles was still going strong. Actually stronger. She was so hyped up by her wild night of freedom that she had enough energy to keep going. And going. And going. Like the EverReady Bunny. On steroids.

Our house looked like it had been visited by the Tasmanian Devil.

And what was Pebbles doing? Exactly what she continued to do the rest of the day until we finally gave her a bedtime dose of clonidine.

She bounced on her mini-trampoline while watching cartoons, her face 6″ from the TV screen. She bounced on the couch. Then the recliner. Skidded on her belly across the coffee table. Danced on the windowsills. Laughed hysterically. Talked and talked and talked and talked. Extremely loud. Ran haphazardly through the obstacle course of toys, clothing and overturned furniture she’d scattered throughout the house. Knocking over the stuff she missed the night before.

Judge Not, That Ye Be Not Judged

So, if you think it borders on abuse to medicate a child to get her to sleep, think twice before you judge parents who choose the medication route.

I used to be one of those judgemental types. You don’t want to be me.

Wondering who The Rock and Pebbles are? Want to know
why we’re raising Pebbles? And who the heck is OCD Louie?
Find the answers and more on my About My Blog page.

You might also like Eleven Random Facts About Me and
My Answers to Sophie’s Questions on my Liebster page.