Sleep is overrated

Jared has decided that sleep is definitely over rated. It has been a rough week in regards to sleep. Jeff has been out of town, which is usually fine, but Jared had different ideas. I actually think that it is one of his medications fault. He was started on prednisone, a type of steroid, when his other anti-rejection med. was causing his white count to plummet. He is on a small dose that we have been giving him every other day, but I have discovered a pattern going on this week. Tuesday was a steroid day. He wouldn't nap so I put him to bed at 8 pm and he conked right out and I was thinking "Yeah! A good nights sleep"! Oh how wrong I was. He woke up at 9:30 pm, 2 am, 3 am, and 4 am. At 4 am he decided that he was done sleeping. At five I gave up and put him in front of a movie which wouldn't be so bad if he could handle watching alone for awhile. But, no, he needed me every five minutes until the other kids had to get up for school! I thought for sure that he would take a LOOOONG nap that day. Nope, 30 mins. was it!

He slept a little bit better on Wednesday night, but Thursday was once again a steroid day. He finally fell asleep at 10 pm, but woke up multiple times throughout the night and was up for the day at 5:00 am. This is when I thought to myself that this couldn't be coincidence. I don't think that he is even sleeping long enough or soundly enough to get into a deep sleep. Wow are we tired! So I called the transplant clinic and plead for some help. We are going to try giving him a smaller dose every day instead of a larger one every other day and see if that will help. Oh how I hope that it will help! There's nothing like a toddler with insomnia! :)

This has been one of the challenges of having a chronically sick child. You just never know what is causing certain problems. Before his transplant he was just so sick and throwing up so much that I didn't feel like I could let him cry it out. Plus, that never worked for my other kids. After his transplant he has had moments of sleeping well, but a lot of not sleeping well and so we did the sleep study that told us that he was "mildly abnormal" whatever that means. So, we moved him to a big boy bed and he was doing better for a while but it has all come crashing down the last few weeks. So, how much of this problem is behavioral and how much is caused by his medical issues and medications? That is the golden question! But a 3 year old only sleeping 7 hours of interrupted sleep is not normal! He doesn't sleep even if I am next to him! I'm going to blame it one the medication. Hopefully we'll get something figured out before both of us go crazy from sleep deprivation!