Sophia is an extremely restless sleeper. She is up and down and turned around all through the night. Which means that usually I am doing the same thing :/ We had a sleep study done a few months ago, because we haven't had one since her tonsils and adenoids were removed over a year ago, and things came back abnormal, but not alarming. Sophia has moderate obstructive sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a disorder that occurs when a person's breathing is interrupted during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea is caused by a blockage of the airway, usually when the soft tissue in the back of the throat collapses during sleep. According to our doctor, this happens in a lot of people, but having low tone, like Sophia does, doesn't help matters any. During the sleep study there were 19 obstructive apneas recorded and 37 partial obstructions recorded. Even though Sophia's airway isn't allowing the proper amount of air to pass continually through the night, her O2 stats stayed above 92% the whole night with a mean saturation of 98.7% for the night, which is good.
So where do we go from here? Well, her pulmonary doctor gave us 3 options: 1. we do nothing, except keep observing her sleep behaviors and have another sleep study done in a year to see how things have changed. 2. We start using Flonase nasal spray and Singular at night to help open up her airways. And our third option was using a CPAP machine. Which consists of a mask that fits over the nose and mouth and uses mild air pressure to keep the airways open.
We've decided to see exactly what this CPAP thing is all about and see if it is even something that Sophia will tolerate. If I had to guess I would say, no. But we'll see. After all she does have the tendancy to surprise me :) I'm really not sure about the Flonase/Singular idea. The doctor acted like it was another simple option, but some of the things that I've read, I'm not so sure I want to give her either one of these. Anyone have any thoughts or insight on either drug???
Overall when Sophia sleeps I don't notice a lot of alarming behaviors. I mainly just notice that she is all over the place and constantly getting up through the night, making it a very long night most of the time. This has always been my main concern, why is she always waking up and getting up throughout the night? Is it because she isn't breathing well and waking herself up and then getting out of bed? That could be some of the reason, but her doctor also pointed out, that we all wake up throughout the night, sometimes numerous times throughout the night, and we look around our surroundings, notice that everything is fine, and then go back to sleep. Well when Sophia wakes up in the middle of the night, and looks around her surroundings, she is noticing that I am no longer there laying beside her, like I was when she first fell alseep. Which for her is a big, red flag and she instantly must come find out where I am. Because this little girl needs her securtiy blanket snuggled up nice and close to her at night. Myself being Sophia's security blanket :/ I don't want to be her nighttime security blanket!! Sorry, but I just don't. So now I am back to trying to get her back into the habit of falling asleep solo, which at one time was not a problem, but apparently somewhere along the way, things changed. It's a work in progress right now, but I have faith that this security blanket can break free and hopefully regain my rights to a full nights sleep, mostly uninterrupted and in my own bed for the night!
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