Oh What a Night...

Last night Sophia had an annual sleep study at Riley, just to make sure that those pesky tonsils and adenoids aren't interferring with her airways or disrupting her sleep.  We haven't had any trouble with her sleeping, in fact she is an excellent sleeper, most of the time, but she does have enlarged tonsils and so they may need removed sometime down the road.  So her pulmonary nurse practioner would like her to have a yearly sleep study, which SEEMS painless enough, BUT usually it's a nightmare.

We've had lots of nap and overnight sleep studies in the past 2 years, but last years overnight stay has been embedded in my brain and needless to say I was not thrilled about going back last night.  BUT, to my surprise, Sophia was pretty amazing!  This is not to say that last night wasn't completley EXHAUSTING, but it didn't throw me into a near emotional break down like last time.

After we got there and filled out our paperwork, we went back to our room to get ready.  Sophia was taking everything in and listening very closely to everything the respitory therapist was telling us.  Then two other ladies came in to dress Sophia up in wires, gauze and bandange.  This has ALWAYS been where the nightmare starts!  Last night was shockingly different.  She was so brave and grown up and with a little emotional support from her Mama, she made it through like a champ.  Of course there was that big bottom lip that kept sticking out, and her tiny hands that she needed me to hold, and few tiny tears that slipped out of her eyes, but even though she was obviously a little scared, she held it together and I was SO, SO, SO proud of her!!!  Once she was looking like, well like she just had brain surgery, it was time to go to sleep.  Yeah right!  Again, usually this is where the nightmare continues with crying, screaming and no soothing technique works, but she was calm and collected last night and with my hands in hers, she felt safe.  She looked around for a while, not sure if she should risk going to sleep, even though she was very tired.  Besides the get up all on her head and face, we had a light show going on in the corner with an annoying beeping sound, that just wouldn't let her drift off to sleep until 58 minutes later.  Wow! was that it?  Is it really going to be this easy?  Nope.  I stepped out to the waiting room and about 15-20 minutes later one of the ladies came to get me, she was awake :(  I went in to get her back to sleep and a replay from last year happened.  Arms were flying, legs were kicking, backs were arching and mouths were screaming.  She was like a caged animal trying to escape.  I was shocked and a little nervous for how bad she was reacting and this went on for maybe 15-20 minutes, but then she calmed down and slowly drifted back to sleep.  That was our one and only "bad" episode last night and the rest of the night consisted of me getting up, what seemed like every 20 minutes to lay her back down after she tried to roll over and instead of laying on her tummy she just sat up and stayed there.  Sophia starts out on her back, but always ends up on her tummy and sometimes she ends up at the other end of the bed as well.  But when you have 30-40 wires hooked up to you, it's hard to move around that much and get comfortable. Finally at 4:30am we realized her wires on her head were all coming off, from all the moving she had done through the night and we could either rewrap her head for the remaining hour of the test, or call it a night, and we took option number 2.  We got kind of cleaned up, packed up, and hit the interstate at 5am.  Made it home and into bed by 6:30am and we both snoozed away till 10am.  Overall, I was so impressed with how Sophia handled it all.  It's amazing how much things have changed in a year.  It was so weird seeing her last night being so, grown up.  I still look at Sophia sometimes and see my little baby that I love to hold and cuddle with and still have to do a lot for her, but then I get glimpses of another little girl, and she is growing up into a toddler and looking at acting like a big girl and that makes me so proud!

just getting started

all the wires are on her face/head and wrapped up to keep them secure for the night

nose gear is added to keep track of her carbon dioxide levels

doesn't she looked thrilled?

alright, who's ready for some sleep???

4:30 this morning getting everything taken off

someone is still tired, and that made two of us!