Yesterday was exhausting.
And as is expected after an exhausting day, we all fell asleep, except…we forgot to do my daughter’s hand bandages.
You see, our little girl has started requesting hand bandages at night as she realises she harms herself less when they’re on. Itching at night, is almost like an invitation to scratch, and so whenever she feels the itch coming on, she requests the bandages. If not done, we wake to a blood bath and dried, blood soaked bandages in the morning, whichbecomes a nightmare to remove.
So we slept without em hand bandages, and woke up, as expected, to a blood bath.
I had two options,
1 – ignore the freshly blood-soaked bandages and go back to bed (then have them dry out and harden and cause more irritation and potential blistering) or
2 – Place my shoulder to the wheel and redo her bandages.
I opted for the former…for all of five minutes, before my niggling conscience finally got the better of me.
So at 1:20 in the morning, I forced myself awake and spent the next 35 minutes doing bandages, all whilst trying not to wake my husband and the girls, coz honestly, an infant and toddler awake at this time of morning would lay to rest my desire to crawl back under the covers.
Now, post bandage change, I’m realising some truths this has taught me.
I guess the biggest lesson is to not rely on past experiences.
When my daughter was younger, we simply had to hold her hands whilst she slept to prevent her from scratching. Through some miracle, we’d go to sleep holding her hands, and wakeup… still holding her hands. Tonight we fell asleep holding her hands, and woke up to a blood bath.
Times change, so too the dynamics of a situation, even though the situation itself may seem the same. I learnt that just because one solution worked ‘the last time’, doesn’t mean that that’d be the best solution for this time.
Watching on as she peacefully sleeps beside her little sister, I realise that those few extra minutes of effort was better for the both of us than to have dealt with the problem at a later stage. For her because her skin is no longer irritated by blood soaked bandages, and for me because I have peace of mind knowing that she’ll wake up in a better space tomorrow, ameen.
And lastly, just because you did your best trying to avoid a situation, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I completed the bandage change only to find both my girls awake… wanting me!
