Sleepology

Knowing that someone is watching you while you sleep is kinda trippy. Not just having the glow of the monitor that keeps track of her breathing, but the red lights that are part of the night-vision camera. Definitely interesting when you're trying to sleep.

I'm going to address this before I get a ton of questions/comments about it. Yes, Lily does still take a pacifier (we call it her binky) at almost 4-years-old. We have tried repeatedly to break her of this habit. With the issues that lead us up to the point we're at now (the sleep study), it seemed kind of pointless. The pacifier helped with some of her sleeplessness and self-soothing issues. Hopefully, after we get the results, we'll have a better understanding of why she doesn't sleep well and be able to break her of the pacifier soon.



Last night was Lily's sleep study. It's been a long 6 months working up to this point, but so worth it. Getting all hooked up takes about 30-45 minutes, and Jodie (Lily's tech) let Lily pick out the colors of the various leads. She also helped smooth the electrode stickers that were on her legs and chest.

It took a bit to get her settled down, but with some cuddling, she eventually fell asleep. I'm guessing it probably took 45-60 minutes, which isn't too terrible. Most nights, it's 15-30. Once I finally got to sleep (I'm guessing close to 11), Lily moved and Jodie had to come readjust the nose monitor. Lily freaked out and tossed for over an hour.

Got her untangled, cuddled and back to sleep. At some point, I just fell asleep. Passed out is probably more accurate. So tired. Lily finally got some decent sleep and woke up relatively well. She's used to waking up on her own and hour later than we did.



Six o'clock comes pretty darn early. I was completely exhausted and sore. Every time she woke up crying, I woke up and tried to soothe her and keep her from pulling the nose monitors off.

After waking up, Lily got all of her wires off, which she was more than happy about. Especially the ones on her face and her nose monitor. She was fine after that and even colored in her new coloring book while I filled out her sleep study wake-up questionaire.

I'm anxious to find out the results. With having about 9-10 hours of data from all of the monitors, plus the same amount of time of video to review, it takes a couple of weeks. If they monitors indicate something, they match it up with what they saw on video. I'm so hopeful that they got some great data that will lead to a solution for Lily's sleepless nights.



To reward ourselves after the sleep study, we went to IHOP. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they have a full-picture children's menu (but they don't have that online...of course), much like Bob Evans.