January 2, 2011 - Sleep Troubles

Well, before we switched over to this new blog, I hadn't posted in a LONG time about what was going on with us or with Conner. The biggest thing going on for the past two months is trouble in the sleep department. Conner has been a great sleeper since the day he came home from the hospital at 4 months old. He has napped well and slept through most nights unless he was sick. But those days seem to be over. For the last 2 months, we have been trying to figure out the problem and have had varying degrees of success "fixing" the problem, only to have it resurface a few days or week later.

So this all started around the first week or so of November. I only remember (it seems like it's been forever) because we considered that losing his ear tubes might have bothered him and that happened at the ENT on November 5. Around that time, his reflux medication also changed to generic and his reflux really got bad. Those were the top 2 reasons we could come up with that would possibly change Conner's sleep. In the meantime, while we were trying to figure all this out, we also played around with skipping naptime to see if that helped and it didn't make any difference. Conner is in a much better mood when he naps and whether he naps during the day or not, he was still having trouble sleeping (and still is), so we would rather let him nap and have him in a good mood at least during the day.

We talked to our trusty pediatrician and she suggested maybe the problem was separation. I tried her suggestions and not one of them worked (and usually, she works miracles, so I should have known we were in trouble). What seemed to work was changing Conner back to non-generic reflux medication. Once we did that, he had about 10 days of great sleep with no problems so we thought we solved the mystery.

But then those 10 days were over...and so was sleeping through the night. Conner did get strep throat and 2 ear infections so we thought maybe the ear drops were causing a problem, but now those are done. The problem seems to have evolved...and not in a good way. It started off with difficulty falling asleep, but staying asleep through the night. It might have taken 2 hours for him to go to sleep but he stayed asleep until morning. Now he is waking up several times a night, screaming and running in to our room. He is consolable and goes back to bed, but he is not getting a good night sleep at all and neither are we. The last few nights have been a combination of difficulty falling asleep and lots of nighttime waking. It happens about the same times every night. It is very frustrating.

We wish Conner could just tell us what was bugging him, but that might not happen for a while, so in the mean time, we are trying to be detectives and figure it out. We have tried lots of different things...and are obviously having limited success. We took him off Singulair as well because the doctor mentioned the possibility of it causing sleep trouble...but that doesn't seem to be helping either. Conner will have his adenoids out and hopefully get new ear tubes on January 11, so if any of those things are bothering him, that will fix a little of the problem.

Well, that is only a tiny bit of what has been going on...but it's too long already, so maybe I'll write more tomorrow about the other good and fun stuff that has been going on with us.