The last 2 weeks have been steadily worse. We are at times back to as bad as it was before. Every day is back to an experience in venom and ugliness. We tried to figure out what had changed and deal with those issues. The only two real issues were Faith and Superman starting school with her (and Faith getting into trouble her first day of school that really sent Grace in a tailspin worrying what everyone was thinking of her, having a sister who did what she did) and sleep. It seems that the mornings she wakes up on her own before us she has much worse days than when she sleeps well and we have to wake her.
Anyway, Faith has not gotten into any more trouble (to our knowledge) and we have been trying all kinds of things for sleep.
Bunny Trail: I bought a special melatonin and other stuff spray that is supposed to help with sleep. Grace will even ask for it since it seems to help her. I am using it on JJ too. It seems to help him sleep through the night, although not necessarily fall asleep any faster. I decided to try it on myself as well since I am sleeping worse with the stress of Grace's backtracking and JJ now in our room every night (on his own cot - but that story is too long to go into here). Anyway, I was waking in the morning wondering if I had actually even slept at all. But with this spray I seem to be sleeping more soundly and feeling more rested when I do use it. I am happy with it so far:)
So...
After trying on our own to figure out what is going on and not being able to fix it we contacted the APRN. She increased the dose of the medication as we clearly are not at therapeutic levels yet. Her first increased dose will be tonight.
Praying it works!
Now that we know that it can be better, it is both a blessing to know that medication can help significantly and a fear experience that the situation could go back to where it was.
I CANNOT live the way that it was. The kids were all getting anxious again. The stress levels in the house were getting worse. Even Superman was finally just looking at her and telling her to knock it off - usually he will just take her verbal abuse. It is hard to think that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and see it fade to darkness again. I was starting to lose the fragile connection I was developing with Faith again. So now I keep her up after Grace has gone to bed and spend time watching a favorite show together. Faith doesn't talk (she will write to me, but not talk about anything real) so snuggling and watching our show together will hopefully help to bridge the gap. That is also when JJ started having trouble sleeping again (and he got sick) and he was coming to our room again every night claiming he was having nightmares. (Hence our getting the cot - he is now too big to be in our bed!) I only got the spray I referred to above since she has gotten worse so I hope that when he transitions back to his room again the spray will help him sleep through the night in there ;)
BUT - we have hope that it will be better. The medication helped once, hopefully it will help again. I am a bit afraid that we will have to increase the meds every month, but I was assured that we would not have to do that;)
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