Sleep on an empty stomach

Last week, Heather told me how guilty she felt because one night her son fell asleep without eating dinner. I told her not to feel bad, especially since he survived till the next morning.

Last night, the same thing happened. I felt a little more guilty than Heather probably did, given the following circumstances.

We were out at the playground and Lucas was running and slipped in some dirt. He cried and cried about his boo-boo. It was a mild scrape, there wasn’t any blood oozing out of his knee. I held him in my lap for a little bit and tried to comfort him, then we headed home anyway, him crying the whole way.

I cleaned his wound and put some Neosporin on it. He cried and whimpered throughout the treatment. He kept crying, “I don’t want to take a bath tonight, I don’t want to get my knee wet.” I told him to sit in his room until he stopped crying. He cried for about 10 minutes, then silence. It was only a little after 5pm. The last thing Lucas ate was a big bowl of oatmeal around 3:30 in the afternoon.

I asked Kevin to go into his room. Lucas was asleep so Kevin deftly slipped a diaper on him and covered him up.

Kevin and I ate our dinner, just the two of us. We watched a full episode of “Lost”. Then halfway through the subsequent episode, around 8pm, Lucas woke up. He wasn’t upset at all, he was just awake. He had soaked through his diaper and there was a big wet spot on the bed. The first thing he said was, “I don’t want to take a bath.” I assured him he would not get a bath tonight. Then he asked for a band-aid. I gave it to him and he put it on by himself while I changed his sheets and got some clean pajamas for him.

Lucas didn't ask for dinner and I didn't offer it tohim. I read him some books and told him a couple stories, and after a while he fell asleep again.

Lucas woke up this morning around 7:30am. He, like Heather’s son, survived just fine on an empty stomach.