Sleep Depreviation

For the past several months we have been having problems with Lincoln waking up in the middle of the night WIDE awake and ready to play, eat, read, and do just about anything other than sleep. Waking up at 1 am, falling asleep again at 4 am, then trying to wake up at 7 am for school is REALLY tough.

So this week I was able to schedule an appointment with a Sleep Institute in Temple, TX (about 2 hrs away) for a sleep study. We went in on Wednesday and met with the Neurologist for a consult then reported to the Institute at 7 pm. He was exhausted to begin with but then having all the wires and monitors attached to his head and body just set him off. He ended up screaming and crying himself to sleep then the Nurse finished attaching the wires. The night was tough for me because I woke up every time the nurse came in to fix one of his wires, but Lincoln basically slept through the night.

(Lincoln just after the last wire and head wrap)

I thought it may have been a waste of time since he slept all night, but the doctor actually had some red flags to discuss the next morning.

The first was the fact that he paused breathing 29 times during the night which is way more than normal, but the most troubling issue was the decrease in his oxygen levels while he paused. It dropped more than 4%, which is more than they prefer.

While reading his monitors, they determined it took him 175.5 minutes to reach his first REM cycle, which is too long. Normal sleep cycles go from beginning to end within 2 hours and then continues. He woke up twice before getting to his REM cycle and then woke up several more times.

So the first step was to check his Iron levels, which when functioning properly produce dopamine to help you sleep. If not the iron levels, we would then have to check his heart and possibly his upper pallette.

We got the blood work results back found that his ferritin levels were almost off the charts too LOW. They suggest an iron supplement for anyone whose levels are below 50...Lincoln's levels were at 13!!! So we are hoping to get his iron levels up as soon as we can get into the pediatrican's office on Monday. Hopefully fixing this will fix the problem.

After all our appointments, we went to the park and played for a little bit and saw a really cool steam engine to play on. I'm glad to be home though.

(Bluebonnet field outside the Sleep Institute)