It was a dark and stormy night.....

no really. it was, but i'm skipping ahead a bit.

We came home from the hospital on Thursday night.  I was off all weekend for a previously scheduled conference with our business team.  So I was able to stay with Oliver for a 3 day weekend.  The kid stuck to me like glue....almost always chest to chest and often asleep.  Dr Leber called on Friday to let us know that Dr P would see us at the National Pediatric OMS clinic in Springfield, IL on Tuesday afternoon.  We would have to spend the night Monday and Tuesday night and they had arranged for us to stay at the Ronald McDonald House about 2 blocks away from the Southern Illinois University Hospital that housed the clinic.  We were thankful to be getting in to see him quickly and excited for a treatment protocol that would return our child to us.

We had no idea how long a weekend could feel.  Oliver was no longer sleeping well at night.  Maybe 30-45 minutes at a stretch, fitful the whole time.  He would scream if he was left in his bed and attempt to stand up (frightening when he was so uncoordinated and would have tremors when he tried) so we couldn't leave him there to try to fall asleep without risking his safety.  So, he slept with us.  Which meant, we didn't sleep much at all.  Taylor ended up calling his mom before 6 am on Monday to ask her to come help him so he wouldn't be alone with Ollie the whole day while I worked.  I'm so thankful (so is he!) that Mimi came down.  She kept Oliver entertained most of the day, but he was beginning to change.  His behavior was rapidly declining, to the point that we didn't even recognize him as our son.  The only way to describe it is rage.  He would yell, point, turn red in the face.  It was really hard to watch.  At this point, we really didn't understand much about OMS....we were holding Ollie or doing something for him or each other almost 24/7 so we hadn't had time to do any research or reading.  If we had, we would have known the rage stems from lack of restorative sleep.

Monday night, I rushed home from work so we could pile in the car and head to Springfield....

OK, back to the story... it was a dark and stormy night...... the drive to Springfield should have taken about 6 hours, the longest we had tried to go with Oliver ever.  We left about 6 pm, figuring he would fall asleep around 8.  We were wrong.  SO VERY WRONG.  About 1 hour in, Oliver started fussing, which quickly progressed to crying.  Taylor and I switched around and I went in the back seat to try to calm and entertain Ollie.  Nothing worked and Oliver ended up throwing up several times from crying so hard.  Meanwhile, Taylor has about a 2 car length visibility through the torrential rain when we come to a complete stop.  Eventually, we were routed off the highway for a detour (an accident had closed 94) we were able to stop on the side of the country road...though we couldn't find a covered gas station or anything dry.  We cleaned Oliver up as best we could, walked him around in the rain for a bit (thankfully it had let up some) and piled back in.  We would continue this stop, walk, regroup routine at least 2 more times before we finally gave up.  We were deciding between finding somewhere to stop for the night (really, only a few hours at this point as we were still 4 hours from Springfield and we had to check-in at the clinic at 7:30 am) and pressing through the screaming child and raging storm.  We decided to pull ollie out and keep on driving.  He slept peacefully for the final 4 hours and Taylor safely navigated the floodwaters.  We arrived at Ronald McDonald House 2 hours later than expected... the overnight manager was just as gracious as if it were 2 in the afternoon.  We quickly settled in, set an alarm and went to sleep....with a restless baby boy between us......