Sleep Baby Sleep

Last night was Elena's sleep study at the children's hospital downtown. One word: AWFUL!!! I tried to have a really positive attitude going in with her- telling her excitedly how she as going to get to "sleep in a different baby bed tonight". When they began hooking her up to everything (already an hour past her normal bedtime), I made it a game of counting the "stickers" and seeing what color would be next. But when they got to putting stuff on her head, she was not a happy girl! They "papoosed" her, which means that they wrapped her in a sheet with her arms at her sides so tight that she could not move. Still, she as able to bring her feet up and kick like a dolphin to let us know what she thought about it. Eventually she had about 10 things stuck to her face and about 10-15 in her hair on her head. All these wires were gathered together at the back of her head and her head was mummy-wrapped all the way around her hair and under her chin. Everything was fairly stable except the nose things. As soon as she was un-papoosed she proceeded to show us all that tape was no match for her. Those nose things were coming out!

I sat with her for about 10 minutes trying to get her to lay still and go to sleep. I sang, I patted, I kissed. All to no avail. So I finally left her room and went to the nurses station where they were watching her on a video screen. She found the box that all the wires were plugged into and began to pull at it, so I had to go back in a lay her down again. I left again and she cried pretty hard, but laid herself down. This was now about 9:30pm. I went to watch TV in the lounge until 11:00pm and came back to check on her.

I asked "How's she doing?" (because I was ready to go into her room and sleep on the bed next to her, but I knew I should not do this until she was really asleep). He said she was mad. She apparantly kept removing her nose things. He would wait until she was in stage 4 sleep and then try to go fix it. She would wake up and freak out because she has no idea where she is or who he is. So he would fix the nose things and leave and she would pull them out again before she would go back to sleep. He said he had been in her room 6 times or so to fix it. Apparantly this is normal, but I was incredibly frustrated because now we were 4 hours past normal bedtime and she was still not asleep! So we waited for stage 4 again and I went in to fix it. He eventually had to come in and help me, but we got it in and taped all the way across her face and she went back to sleep without pulling it out.

So I laid down around 1:00-ish and slept for an hour and then slept again from around 4:00-5:00. Then they said we were done and sent us home.

We got her all unhooked and cleaned off and came home and went to bed! What a night!!!

I really hope they were able to get enough of a normal night out of her that we get some answers as to why her pulse O2 dropped so low on the two previous home sleep studies. And I hope we never have to do that again!!!

Here are pics of her as we got her ready. I wish I had a full-front one with everything taped on. She didn't think it was very funny that I took any at all, so this is all I got...