Worst One to Date

And I'm not talking about the weather. Well, that did have something to do with it.

I spent a week with my parents recently and Benjamin slept in a pack 'n' play. Without the Snuza or Angelcare monitor. Just a noise monitor when I was out of the room. We shared a room for sleeping which I don't necessarily recommend if you're a paranoid mom with a kid who rolls around approximately 3,498 times each night. But you know what? Those movements always let me know he's okay, so I am okay with losing sleep.

We came back home and resumed our Angelcare monitoring, as we've been doing since we transitioned him to the crib at 3.5 months. He'll be 14 months this week.

Just two nights ago, my husband mentioned (after a few repeated false alarms) that he might be okay with cutting off the movement monitor and just sticking with sound (of which we turn off anyway because we can hear him just fine in the next room over).

And then it was yesterday. The day of crazy flooding in my town. A town they featured on the news multiple times. My town is very small. It's a huge suburb, sure, but the town itself is not huge. Flooding all over the place and devastation everywhere. We were lucky, but still didn't escape losing sleep over what could have been much more disastrous. If we were not up at crazy hours mitigating the situation, we may have been in way more trouble.

In the midst of it all, I noticed the Angelcare monitor hangy ball (technical term... or pendulum if you want to get all bourgy on me) was gone. Disappeared. Well, so had part of the numbers indicating the temperature in his room. We have two monitors but this one seems to hate us. In that moment, my heart started beating rapidly, despite understanding that even though the display is malfunctioning that the monitor itself was still working.

It was 8:30 a.m. at this point and we were handling buckets and slamming things nonstop to prevent our basement from going under, yet our very light sleeping baby was still not awake from the racket. Worst storm in 16 years. A 24-hour period of nonstop thunderstorms brought down nearly 7 inches on our region and 8 inches is the record of monthly rainfall ever. We nearly got that in one day. To say this was insane is not sugar-coating. People were in boats and swimming in the park across the street, people. I think that Chicago hates us.

My wonderful husband told me that he'd go upstairs with me to check on him. I knew he told me that because we were both afraid that we'd come face-to-face with another tragedy. Seeing another one of our children slip through our fingers. I told him not to come with me because his feet were gross from trudging around outside in the sloshing mud.

I walked in and saw a baby sleeping on his belly, passed out. I can't use the term out cold nonchalantly anymore because omg, I know what it's like to have a child literally out cold. I've touched and held his cold skin. I looked at his face, shook him and saw that his eyes were open and looked glazed. While I never did see Andrew's eyes, I know that people often pass with their eyes open. Or at least that's how television portrays things.

No response. Limp. I shook him some more and then grabbed him. His head went limp and finally he looked at me lethargically and waved.

He waved. He does love to wave.

Then I knew he was alive, but you guys. After 12 hours of sleep, or even 2 hours, this kid usually pops right up from deep sleep and stands in his crib like he's in basic training or something at the sound or sight of any noise or light. Hence the blackout shades.

I know that the crazy storm and our insane lack of sleep contributed to my freakout, but this has to be my worst PTSD moment to date.

I think I'll keep the Angelcare monitor on him until he graduates high school.