Being Scared at Night

An  update on Tiny Boy and all the drugs.

1. He's off singulair, which has known psychological side effects, and on inhaled steroid.  It's something to remember to do in the morning, which is annoying, and it's too early to say if it will keep him off albuterol as well as the singulair.

2. He's also off both prilosec and iron supplements.  He came off prilosec first, and it didn't seem to have much effect on sleep, so the larger issue must have been his low iron level.  Which, after about 3 months of mega-doses, came up to normal.  So now he's just on a 'maintenance' dose of flintstones vits with iron.  He is definitely definitely definitely less restless than when we started this whole process.

3. Melatonin still going, until we see the sleep specialists in a few weeks.  It works so nicely I don't ever want to take him off it.  But I'm guessing we'll wean to a lower dose and then cut.

But the downside of melatonin is that it seems to wear off at ~7-8 hrs, at which point he is AWAKE, sometimes for as long as two hours, and then he goes back to sleep again.  He's getting 10-11 hrs of sleep each night total, and clearly sleeping in longer stretches than waking every 1-2 hrs.  But if he wakes me from 3-5, well, I'm just awake at 3 on.

So we've been working on STAYING IN HIS OWN BED ALL NIGHT LONG.  But he's scared.  And has a zillion and one issues I've tried addressing, including swapping nightlights, new pajamas, giving him the blanket from my bed.  He's gone about every other night lately.  And now I've just flat out bribed him to stay in his room.  5 days in a row, he gets the Halloween costume that I will probably give him anyway, but he doesn't know that.  So something to work toward.  We're talking about it A LOT.  I've told him I will give him a hug if he's scared and tuck him back in.  But what I'd really like, obviously, is for him to be not scared.  Ideas?

Big picture, his sleep is so much better it's like living in a different family with a different child.  But for the moment I'm sleeping worse.  Or at least differently bad.  And I don't like it.

Well, now that's annoying (Singulair)

Well, overall life on melatonin has been AWESOME.  With one exception, Tiny Boy falls asleep within 15 minutes of his head hitting the pillow, and often it is almost immediate.  No rolling.  No kicking.  No calling.  No drama of any kind whatsoever.  This includes when we've been out (like last night LG had a meeting that ended 7:45 which is usually when Tiny Boy is headed to sleep).

The thing where he's awake for 1-2 hrs in the middle of the night is done.  Not sure what that was about, frankly.

He had a cold (not surprisingly) and I restarted his singulair about a week ago.  And I've noticed his nightwaking happens much earlier (like 11-12 instead of 3-5) and then he's more restless.  And crying in a bad dream sort of way.  Turns out night terrors and insomnia are a childhood side effect of singulair.  I'm not sure how this escaped my attention.  It's a good drug for him--means he hasn't really had any major asthma episodes--so I'll need to ask his ped about alternatives.  Because I like his lungs to work.  But I really like him to sleep.

Oy.

On Melatonin (Redux)

This thing where I put Tiny Boy to bed and he's out cold within 5 minutes?  I could get used to that.

It hasn't happened every day...but combined with a decent bedtime and 50-60 minute lead time (like, he takes melatonin at 7:30 and he's in bed at 8:30), WOW.

Tiny Boy's Behavioral Modification Plan

So...now that Tiny Boy is generally sleeping better DURING the night (he's waking up 1-2 times, instead of 2-5, and going back to sleep easily), the drama at bedtime has gone up exponentially.

We went back to the sleep clinic today.  New plan is to keep him on iron (he had a blood draw today), prilosec, and add melatonin an hour before bedtime.  I'm not sure how long they'll keep him on the melatonin (we go back in about a month) but I'm guessing it will work like a charm.

I've used a very tiny amount (about 0.2 mg) with moderate success.  They're putting him on 1 mg.

And if that doesn't work, there's always this book which must work by way of some version of hypnotism.  Either way, I feel fairly certain Tiny Boy at age 4 will be sleeping much better than Tiny Boy ages 1-3.5.

And me?  Knock wood and all that hocus pocus, I'm getting about 8 hours these days, which is simply divine...

Woe the Return of the Old Tiny Boy

Two nights in a row he's woken and come to my bed early and thrashed.

Which is why we stopped co-sleeping a while ago.

He took a long time to go to bed last night, and hten he woke early, and somehow he'd actually pooped in his pullup (he hasn't NOT used the toilet in more than 18 months).  So something was amiss.

I hope to go back to the new Tiny Boy soon...

That Whole Sleep Begets Sleep Thing

So other than one night (when I didn't give him melatonin) that involved a 2 hour bedtime crazy session....Tiny Boy has been doing really well.

He goes to bed within a reasonable time frame.

He wakes generally once, and usually that's coming about 4:00 am.  He does call me, and I can't get him to stop doing that, but as soon as he settles in my bed, we're both back out.

Yesterday he said he was tired around 3:00 in the afternoon....  had an early bedtime of 7:15ish and he wasn't up until 8:00 this morning, when I woke him!!!  Uhh????

Week #2

So it's been more than a week of The Plan, including a trip that required changing time zones and sleeping in a trundle bed.

The Plan, as you'll recall involved a combo of medical and behavioral tinkering:

• iron supplementation (30 mg/daily)
• prilosec
• new sippy cup for night

The upshot of all this is he is eating like a fiend, so I'm not sure if he really wasn't feeling great before or what (he was taking in only 50ish calories/night, so that's not a major loss), and only waking once in the middle of the night, generally in the 3-5 window, at which point he's coming into my bed (he's asking me to sit in the rocking chair, and that is not going to happen).

So this is pretty excellent.  Not perfect, but reasonable.