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The Daily Mom

Why Do They Always Get Sick In The Middle Of The Night?!

It's the middle of the night, you are catching up on some much needed mommy beauty rest and then you hear it. The whimper. The faint, "Mama, I don't feel good." You hurry to your child's bedroom and there it is - your poor baby lying in a puddle of sick. This used to happen a lot with friends when I was in college but it usually didn't signal illness just a great night of partying. Unfortunately, that's not the case anymore. This ain't no party ladies.

You glance over at the clock and it reads 2:20am. Lily doesn't get sick that often anymore (thank god!) but when she does it always seems to strike in the middle of the night. Why doesn't it seem to happen when I'm fully awake and prepared to deal with it? The best is, you finally get them all cleaned up, soothe them and put them back to bed. They have a lovely, restorative sleep while you spend the next hour or so doing laundry, throwing out rugs, whatever - god forbid your husband should help you. They wake up the next morning all refreshed and feeling 100% better. You wake up looking like something the cat dragged in and feeling like you're going to throw up any minute. Then I take her to the pediatrician and spend 10 minutes trying to convince him that she really is sick because if I don't she will get sick again the minute the sun goes down or his office closes!

You may feel like this only happens to your child but you are not alone! This happens to everyone, no matter what the age. I remember when Lily was an infant the crazy, sleepless, barking cough nights or the sudden fevers that used to strike at 3am, where like a race car we'd go from 98 to 104 in seconds flat. Fun.

I googled why this always seems to happen in the middle of the night and Dr. Greene, renowned pediatrician, had this to say, I'm cutting and pasting this for you: "...pressures in our bodies change when we are horizontal. Lying down increases congestion, ear pain, postnasal drip, sore throats, and several types of cough."

"Additionally, our bodies are on a 24 hour clock called the Circadian Rhythm. Hormone levels rise and fall according to this daily cycle. Some hormones help us to wake up in the morning, others help us to sleep at night. These same hormones affect how we feel pain. During the day high levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, keep us from feeling some of the pain and keep our fevers in check. At night our fevers rise and our discomfort increases. As if this weren't enough, throughout the day our senses are barraged by gigabytes of stimuli every second, and our brains are busy processing all the data. At night the amount of stimuli we are bombarded with is drastically reduced. This gives our brains an opportunity to pay more attention to this already increased level of pain. These factors combine to greatly amplify symptoms at night. Feeling better in the morning doesn't mean that you are better." There, I couldn't have said it better myself. (Puh-lease, I had no idea.)

Well, that helps explain the sick induced sleepless nights phenomenon but doesn't really make me feel much better. What does make me feel better is the old anecdote: misery loves company. Recently, a friend of mine (who happens be quite wealthy) had all three kids wake up in the middle of the night throwing up. That phone call really made me happy. Fortunately, money doesn't shield everyone from the universal parental experience.....unless they have live-in help. Share with us your most recent they-got-sick-in-the-middle-of-the-night-again story.