Sleep Study- Take 1

Porter had his first sleep study this week. People with Down syndrome can be at risk for sleep apnea. He shows some warning signs- he breathes heavily and moves around a lot at night. Additionally, we are trying to determine if it would be beneficial to take his tonsils and adenoids out now after the rough winter he had, or if we can wait. 

I was nervous. After being on oxygen in January when he had RSV, I expected him to fight the nasal cannula. I worried he'd get tangled in the wires and wake up. I wondered if he'd ever fall asleep.

With the help of Elmo song videos on my phone, he was hooked up with minimal fussiness. He was fine before the super gentle and caring techs put in the cannula. Then he got mad. But we had a few sips of water and sang our bedtime songs and made ourselves comfy and he was able to fall asleep.

They monitored so many different things- respiration, pulse oxygen, carbon dioxide output, eye activity, snoring, belly movement and more. He slept all night. There were a few times he sat up while asleep and a few others where he was tangled in the wires. The crazy thing is that he was in a very deep phase of sleep at these points in time and didn't notice that he was being moved. 

I learned quite a few things about how he sleeps. I also learned that I'm an incredibly light sleeper, which isn't much of a surprise. Each time the tech came in, he asked if I was sleeping at all because I was hyper-responsive to Porter's every move. I did sleep a bit and was quite surprised when we made it to 5:45am wake up time (Porter slept ten more minutes while they unhooked most of the wires). He was so happy to have the cannula out and was even more excited to see his car seat and know we were headed home. We will get our results in a week or two. 

While at the visit, we made a new friend. Because the universe is so amazing, it just happened that a three year old boy with Down syndrome was scheduled the same night as us. This boy happens to live right up the hill from my parents. He traveled quite a distance for his sleepover. We will circle back with him and meet the rest of his amazing family next time we have a sleepover at my parents. We can't wait!