12 Comments

It’s that time of year – sickness seems to be lurking around every corner, luring your kids to catch it! I’ve got a miserable 14 month old in the house at the moment who has a bad cold. It’s hard when they’re little and can’t blow their nose, or explain what hurts, so if you have a child who’s anything like mine, then they just tend to cry and whine all day. So by night time, Mum is pretty worn out!

I don’t deal well with disturbed sleep, so last night as we were preparing the kids for bed, I decided to do a few things to make attending to my sick child in the middle of the night a little easier. I thought I’d share my ideas as I’m sure other parents will be in the same boat over the coming months!

– Measure out any medicine they might need in the middle of the night, and have it on hand just in case (particularly if they wake with a fever, which mine did). It saves hunting around for those little syringes in the dark and measuring out the right dose while you’re half asleep. If you don’t need it, it can always be syringed back into the bottle in the morning.

– If you’re expecting that your child might have a particularly restless night (ie. you’ll spend more time out of bed than in), then pop a mattress on the floor next to their cot/bed. That way, if you have to get up a few times, you can just sleep on the floor in their room. I find that I get less cranky if I don’t have to keep getting out of bed, and I can just pop my hand through the bars of the cot and give my bub a pat and shush back to sleep.

– Have a few old towels or cloth nappies at the ready, just in case you have to deal with vomit in the night. It makes for easy clean up, and again, you don’t have to wake the whole house while you hunt for something to use to clean up the mess.

– Double-sheet the bed. I did this in the early days of overnight toilet training, but it’s also useful when they’re sick, just in case you need to change sheets in the night. Basically you make the bed: waterproof mattress protector/sheet/waterproof mattress protector/sheet. So if you need to change the sheets, you can just pull the top two layers off, and you’ll already have a fresh sheet underneath. Most of the time the top sheet misses the action, but maybe have a spare top sheet and blanket handy just in case.

– During those messier illnesses, even having a spare pair of pj’s handy for yourself and the kids is a good idea. I don’t know how many times I’ve caught a feed down my cleavage in the middle of the night!

What are you top tips for surviving the night with sick kids?

---

Posted by Schmoofie1983, 16th June 2015