Dr. Pam Issues Emergency Overnight Hug Ban

It was just a little more than a year ago that the Canadian sleeping-kid-whisperer we lovingly call “Doctor Pam” told us to stop wandering into Kina’s room every time she whined at night, because it was keeping us all awake. Within a week, a five-month-long reign of sleep terror had ended. Why did it take five months for us to get somebody to tell us to do the obvious thing? Not sure! Why have I been writing headlines about sleep issues for a month and a half? Long story short: After a night of nearly infinite hugs, resulting in a general nervous breakdown, we played our Doctor Pam card yesterday and got the advice we knew was coming all along—stop going in and hugging her in the middle of the night, like she told us a year ago.

What’s old is new again. Kina’s rapid mental development keeps her up at night, it scares us both, we comfort her, nobody sleeps, Doctor Pam tells us to cut it out, and then things are better for a year. It all makes sense, but who would not want to spend the entire night hugging this child? Granted, it’s not great for going to work and being able to pay attention, but the snuggles are nice when you’re not weeping because you’re so exhausted.

The other thing that happened a year ago: We got COVID-19. I realized the other day that we were coming up on the first anniversary of The Main Event of Early 2020, when I woke up unable to smell anything after a night of violent chills and fever. On one hand, glad we got that out of the way, but hooboy was I terrified. All three daily caregivers of this publication’s esteemed publisher were simultaneously bedridden and confined to quarters for two weeks. Nobody would offer us a test, and our doctors all told us to just rest and drink fluids. I took my temperature and checked my blood oxygen every thirty minutes and spent the intervening eighteen hundred seconds reading Twitter. It was unenjoyable and boring. Twelve days later, I felt better, and I drew a newspaper for Kina.

I’ll talk about that in a couple weeks.

As I write this, Kina is calling out from her bedroom that we haven’t given her enough hugs to last the night. She’s telling us that Curious George is probably too crazy to watch at nighttime. She’s complaining about the plastic tag she found in Teddy Dog’s ear. Eventually she’ll go to sleep, because we all know better now. You learn a lot in a year, if you remember to remember it.

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