Tonight might be the last night I don’t get any sleep.
In January my son Jeremiah will turn five. He was placed with us for adoption three-days before his first birthday and has NOT slept through the night even one night since he joined our family.
For the first year I just lived with it thinking it might be normal for a little baby who had already been in the care of four different mom’s. I just resigned myself to the fact that he and I would share those hours in the middle of the night together and bond better. When he was so little it really wasn’t that difficult to deal with, we would go down stairs together, get a bottle and rock or cuddle until we both fell back to sleep.
When he was two-years-old it started to be a bit more frustrating for me. He was mobile and getting into everything, climbing up on everything and I needed to stay wide awake to make sure he was safe. As he got older he turned to middle of the night playing usually waking up at about 3:00 a.m. for the day! Of course, we cut his nap out completely in the hope that he would go to sleep and stay asleep all night. Right!
During his third year of life things started to get very scary for all of us. Jeremiah learned to wake up and be quiet. He had mastered opening doors and we had locks installed on every door in our house. We decided we had to do this after getting up one morning and not finding Jeremiah anyplace in the house. It was one of those awful moments in time when all the horrible things come into your mind. We found him asleep in the car, in the garage. He had the car keys with him. The same locksmith who got him out installed all the lock on the house.
At this point I started to believe this was a real problem. One that he was not going to outgrow. We also started to see behaviors that “looked” like ADHD and began to wonder if our little boy was going to be way more then we ever thought we would have to handle. His sleeping problems seemed to be getting worse and worse. At night he was up doing whatever, he seemed to always have some kind of “mission” a plan of action, busy. One night he was playing with his tools, hammering, drilling and working. I wished he really knew what he was doing–he could have added a new family room on the house with the work he appeared to be so dedicated to completing.
At the same time he was having difficulties during the day. He would just fall right to sleep in the oddest places. Guaranteed any kind of car trip would knock him out. The kid would be awake one moment and gone the next. He would drop right off while walking…while riding in the shopping cart…on a roller coaster at Disneyland. It was odd. But, very clear he was dealing with some kind of sleeping disorder.
We finally, got the referral to have a sleep study done. And in April he and I spent the night at the hospital. It seemed to take forever to get the results, but when we did I was completely terrified and have been every night since. Jeremiah has several things going on with his sleep but the most frightening is Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Apparently his five-times larger then normal tonsils block his airway. His blood oxygen levels dip into the 80% rage and I guess we are all very lucky he has not just forgotten to take another breath. Sleep apnea is a very horrible condition and considering the fact my 33-year-old step-brother died from it in 2004 I have been a complete basket case since learning this was one of my little boy’s problems.
For the past six-months it hasn’t mattered if he wakes me up–because I haven’t been able to sleep anyway. I wake up about 20 times a night to check and make sure he is breathing. According to his sleep study he stops breathing at least once every five minutes. Anyone of those times could be his last moments of life. So, I sit and watch him all night long. Hardly able to concentrate even on my writing. I worry I won’t hear him if I type. I worry I won’t be there to make him take a breath. Just when I am too tired to worry any more the kid wakes up!
Tomorrow is the first step to see if we can help Jeremiah sleep better. He also has Restless Leg Syndrome which I am too scared to research just yet. One thing at a time, it is enough the doctor told me not to worry yet, so I am not. Please don’t anyone tell me what Restless leg syndrome is just yet. Let me get through what happens at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. There is also a real possibility that he has narcolepsy but, they don’t generally diagnosis narcolepsy in children so we are told to wait awhile and see if having his tonsils removed will help him sleep through the night.
Of course, we are worried about surgery but, keep telling ourselves we had our tonsils out so it is no big deal. The sleep doctors tell us that the behaviors that look like ADHD may just be sleep deprivation. We will have to see how he is doing in about six-months, if he still looks ADHD we will have to consider that later, right now Jeremiah and mommy just need to get some sleep.
I will post more about our experience when we recover from the surgery tomorrow, right now I need to make a batch of Sprite-Ice Cubes and Jell-O.
Related Blogs:
- ADHD or Sleep Apnea?
- Six Ways to Deal With a Hyperactive Child
- Back to School: Is Your Child’s Sleep Pattern on Track?
Photo Credit for this Blog: Melissa a Families.com Christian Blogger. Read her blogs at: http://members.families.com/mj7/blog