I guess you are all rather tired of hearing about the sleep thing...

You know, that thing most people do at night. As most of my regular readers know, I now believe a night of uninterrupted sleep is just a rumor. But I have decided to keep a little sleep "diary" - a print out of the calender where I record the sleep we had every morning. In the week before this, from Tuesday to Tuesday., we had Little man L only sleeping through 3 nights - one of which was the Tuesday after Occupational Therapy and the Saturday when he only fell asleep at 11:30 after a huge afternoon nap. We used to see a pattern that he slept badly after OT (stimulated?) and on the nights when he had his eyedrop in his good eye. The problem was that 3 of the other nights he wake up between 2:30 and 3:00 and then was awake for 1 to 3 hours - apparently a typical SID kid issue. The 7th night he woke up briefly and went back to sleep. The problem is that C had a bad week too and they only both slept through one night.

I was hugely relieved when the OT on Tuesday morning had some more suggestions after discussing the issue with some of her partners. She had quite a few suggestions (and heavens, we have tried many both suggested by her or reasearched by me- the weighted blanket, the melatonin...) - let him sleep in a sleeping bag, do deep pressure with him before bedtime, keep up with the Melatonin and see if he wants the weighted blanket - let him decide. We also changed our routine to bath just before bed and not before dinner. The result - he has now slept through for 4 nights in the last 7, 2 where he did the hours awake thing (I call them epic sleep failures) and one where he briefly woke up at about 3:00. A slight one night improvement. Little man C kept waking up at about 3:00 this week, but somehow on Friday night it all came together and they both slept through for the following 3 nights. Last night was epic sleep failure time again - but from 4:30 so I guess it is ok. But L fell asleep directly after bath and I did not do the deep pressure exercises with him so I do not know if that was the issue.

Regardless - one would assume I had a good sleep for 3 nights? Nope! I woke up every night at 3:30 - jip, I now have their sleep routine. This morning at least I slept until L woke up.

So this morning the OT showed me the brush technique used by OT for SID kids - she die explain that it must be followed by the deep pressure and she has lent us a brush so that we can see if it works for us. This is something that will either work or not but Little man L seem to enjoy it. So the experimenting goes on. I have given up on finding "the answer" to the issue, but maybe I keep hoping.

BTW she has also suggested that we have his tonsils removed - it's been a long time coming, the tonsils thing, so maybe?