The Sleep Dr

  If you recall from my previous posts from the beginning of the year, Sadie was having some pretty weird episodes of being unresponsive.  From there we tested her hormones, and then we tested for seizures, and then from there we checked her sleep apnea for any changes.  What did we figure out? Absolutely nothing!  Luckily, Sadie has not had anymore of these episodes. Thank the Lord.  I really would like to know what these episodes were, but I must (at least at this point in her life) accept the fact that its just another "Sadieism", which means it's something unique just to her that she does that is unexplainable.

  However, we did finally actually meet with the sleep Dr just to see what he had to say about the results, which honestly wasn't very much.  He just explained that she has an extreme amount of breathing pauses but her body handles them wonderfully. Which means her heart rate does not drop and her other organs are not being effected (old news) and that she should use a nasal cannula with oxygen at this time (also old news).  He said that she is going into all the stages of sleep, although they are shorter stages then the "typical" toddler.  But he would consider her to have adequate amount of sleep and that he does not think that it was a lack of sleep that caused her unresponsive states.

  I asked about getting her an apnea monitor for at home and he said in all reality because of how much she moves at night that the monitor would not be very accurate and would actually cause less sleep for all parties involved as it would be alarming all the time and it would keep us up and her because we would have to keep fixing it.  Usually they are only used on infants.  He said that if I really wanted to monitor her at home, just to use her continuous pulse ox and that will alarm if she stops breathing because her heart and oxygen levels will drop.  So, no new monitor at home.

  Whats the plan?  To continue what we are doing and repeat a sleep study in a year (or before if she has new issues).  And then repeat again a year after that and so on.  This will give us a baseline of how her body is handling the carbon dioxide level and if its getting worse then we know that we need to do a new intervention.  Which would probably be a c-pap machine and possibly meds?  Not sure. Hopefully, we will never have to do anything else besides a nasal cannula.