Pain in the neck

by on Oct 22, 2012

Lately we have been making frequent visits to the chiropractor to ease my daughter’s chronic neck pain. She had developed a new sleeping pattern of rolling over onto her stomach and turning her face to the side. This caused her to wake up with an extremely stiff neck every morning.

To solve the problem, I bought two body pillows to place on either side of my daughter in bed. So now, instead of being able to roll totally onto her stomach, the body pillow would prevent that and she’d end up on her side, hugging the pillow or tossing a leg over it. Neck pain vanished. Mom is a genius.

Ok, here comes the part of the plan that I hadn’t completely worked out. Gracie is frightened of thunderstorms and always crawls into my bed at the very hint of a storm. We live in the South. Thunderstorms are a regular thing. Gracie comes into my bedroom and she is dragging two large body pillows behind her. She stands at the edge of our bed and heaves the large and heavy pillows upward so they land with a loud thwap a mere half-inch from my unsuspecting and sound asleep body. Having body pillows hurled at you is an instant eye opener. It also causes my dog, Griffin, to start barking in panic. It’s at that moment that Gracie whispers “Can I sleep in the bed with you?” This question is whispered because she doesn’t want to wake her father. She’s a thoughtful child but of course everyone is awake at this point, including my son, Jack, who comes running in the room right behind her in sheer terror from either the storm or the dog barking – I’m not sure.

Gracie climbs into bed and carefully places a pillow on each side of her. Jack gets into bed next and curls up against one of the pillows. That leaves about six inches of bed space for the adults. Scott is no fool so he takes his pillow and heads for Jack’s empty bed. The entire six inches of mattress space will be all mine. Lucky me. Since I’m awake, I decide to go to the kitchen to get a drink of water before attempting to squeeze myself onto the bed but when I return to the bedroom I find the dog has taken the last available spot. The kids are now sound asleep, as is the dog, so I head to Gracie’s room.

Everyone woke up a little confused the next morning but I’m happy to report that Gracie didn’t have any neck pain.

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