Shingles and Sleep Reversion

This past week has been a bit tougher than usual. Nothing unmanageable, but still difficult. DH left Vancouver with a nasty cold, and then a few days after Edgar and I arrived back in Calgary DH had developed a rash. I took one look at it and thought, "Well, he's had a cold, and now he has a rash... I don't like it" and demanded that we see the doctor the next day. Edgar had also started developing some eczema on his cheeks thanks to the copious amounts of drool that has just been a steady fountain from his mouth thanks to teething, so I wanted to go in and get that checked anyway.

As someone who has had eczema a lot throughout childhood, pro tip: Get it checked early. Don't look at a rash and think, "Hmmm. This might be eczema. Let's wait and see." It goes away much more easily with a good hydrocortisone cream if it's caught nice and early. I went to the walk-in the very next day after I noticed Edgar's eczema starting, and it was completely gone after two days of applying the prescription cream.

Anywho. DH has some medicine to take for his shingles now, and he's pretty uncomfortable. It hasn't helped that Edgar's been going through a sleep regression. I was really enjoying my sleep, but I guess sleeping through the night wasn't meant to last forever! Edgar now wakes up around midnight to eat and then again at around 4:00AM, and then he's finally up for the day around 8:00AM.

I guess you could call our parenting style pseudo-attachment parenting. Both DH and I made a commitment to follow Edgar's cues for everything and to never force him to eat or sleep unless he was already cueing that he needed to, so we're just going with the flow right now. We also decided to let him outgrow things that some parents would call "bad habits" on his own. For example, rocking him to sleep. We've done that from the beginning, and just the past few days, Edgar has decided that he doesn't need as much rocking. There's even been a few times where Edgar didn't want to be rocked at all and fell asleep on his own once set down in his crib! It's probably a little more difficult than setting our own agenda and forcing him to follow it, but hey -- is my own time really that valuable? Edgar will only be a baby for so long, and we will never be able to go back and redo these moments. He's happy and healthy, and that's what matters to us.