Sleep Study

So we couldn't put it off any longer, the doctors are all in agreement that Max needs some type of sleeping medication to help with his sleep disturbances,  but apparently it is really tricky to prescribe and dose sleeping meds to a toddler and even with all the doctors on our team, we will now begin seeing another doctor who will specifically manage his sleep meds.   The purpose of this sleep test is to see what is going on in Max's head and body while he sleeps.   We know that he has issues transitioning from the different sleep cycles that we normally go through and his body has myoclonic twitches and jerks all night that also wake him up.  So we are anxious to see what these results say.  

After much prepping and practicing Max arrived at the clinic and was promptly hooked up, he was so patient and compliant like always, helping the tech to attach the wires and asking if he could help plug them in.   In this picture we were able to attach wires to all of his limbs and feet under his PJ's.  Then we got all 20 wires placed on his head and then we put a cap on and wrapped it with gauze and tape to keep him from pulling out the wires in his. They had to attach all the wires with school like paste all over his body and then kept it attached with tough adhesive and tape. I am so glad Max is a little boy, I cannot imagine getting all that gunk out of a little girls hair.   So after almost 2 hours of attaching wires and getting them all plugged in he was set and ready to sleep.  They had reserved a room next door for mom to sleep since they thought a tech would have to be with him all night in the room, however I guess the rules are that a parent has to be with little kids at all times.  I was bummed since I wanted it to simulate our home environment as much as possible and since he doesn't normally sleep with me it wasn't as normal as usual.  But since he was such a good patient the tech felt comfortable watching Max from the control room across the hall, they recorded all the audio and video all night.  They ended up with 31 wires all recording a specific detail all night.   We are told that it takes awhile to read the results since they have to go through all 31 results in 15 second increments.   He did so well, he had a hard time falling asleep in a weird environment but all the wires never seemed to bother him. He did wake up at least 5 times by my count, but the tech said there were quite a few sleep arousals and wakenings through out the night. However I don't think they were as extreme as at home since I was right there the tech wanted me to calm him down as fast as possible so that we could get back to recording, which again isn't normal because I like for him to try to soothe himself back to sleep so he is not dependent on a parent.  However we are hoping that we got lots of good data that will explain and help us figure out how to properly dose him.