It’s been a long time since I
updated about Peyton so here goes…….
Summer has been nice – we went to
the beach in early June and Peyton really liked the pool! She enjoyed floating around with her brother,
sister and cousins. Her sleep schedule
was TERRIBLE and she was up almost every single night we were there. I was exhausted by the time we got home from
the lack of sleep, but still had a great time!
This brings me to a current hot
topic in our house….SLEEP (or lack of).
We have always kept Peyton in the living room with us in the evening,
even after bed time – we got so used to doing this when the seizures were bad
that even after things calmed down we continued the habit. She used to doze off around 10 or 11 and we
would take her to bed when we went to bed.
For the past year or so, her bed time has gotten later and later and
sometimes she will be awake till 1am or 2am and then usually sleeps so lightly
during the night that every little noise wakes her up. This leads to her being exhausted (and us
too) during the day and taking ridiculous 4 or 5 hour naps (we don’t get to nap
with her unfortunately!).
We were at our wit’s end so I
asked her neurologist if it was ok to give her Melatonin. He said yes and emailed me several
attachments about kids and healthy sleep habits. I was rather perplexed because all the
reading material he sent me was about kids with no health issues or seizure
disorders, etc…..THEN the light bulb came on in my sometimes dim brain. He was telling me to start treating her like
a regular little three year old and get her on a healthy sleep schedule!!!!!!!! DUH!!!
I don’t know why we have continued to live in crisis mode at
bedtime. Peyton’s seizures are minimal
in the evening and even if she has them, she can sleep thru them and they
aren’t scary seizures. I think we just
got in such a habit of it that we didn’t stop and think about her needing to
have a reasonable bedtime in a quiet room. We even have a video monitor but somehow we
didn’t put two and two together that it would be healthier for everyone to
establish a bedtime for her.
We had a wonderful lady with our
early intervention program come to the house and work with us on some sleep
strategies which was mostly really common sense things we did with our other
two children but never even thought of doing with Peyton. So, Mission Sleep began last Thursday evening
and do you know that she has slept thru the night all but one time since we
started??? I mean she is going to bed at
8:30 and sleeping till 6:30 or 7:00.
It’s crazy!! I think she really
NEEDED the routine of bedtime and has taken to it like a fish to water. I feel so dumb for not figuring all this out
myself, but we spend so much time dealing with her differences that we forget
to treat her like an almost three year old little girl that she is.
In other news, therapies are all
going well and she is getting to be quite the communicator with all her devices
and her ability to make choices. It’s
exciting to see this and we love seeing her respond to us and the kids. She has developed a love of touch and feel
books so in my usual fashion, I have gone overboard and bought her a ridiculous
number of touch and feel books, but she loves them and we love reading them to
her so it’s a win win!
She is working hard on learning
to sit independently and some days are better than others, but she will get
there….she always does!
I will update some recent pics soon
since I know it’s been months since I posted any to the blog. I put a lot on her facebook page, so if you
read this blog and would like to join her page, you can find it under Praying
For Peyton on Facebook. I upload pics
often to her page just because it’s so easy from my phone.
