Sleep? Who needs it?

Sleep is over-rated.....right? Some of you may have heard recently of the sleep issues going on in our house.  Some of you may have heard a little bit about it but not really know what's going on.  Well, here's the deal.  Charlie has been sleeping less and less at night.  It has gotten to the point where Tyler and I are averaging 3-4 hours of sleep a night.  And that's on the high end.  4 hours of sleep is wonderful compared to what we normally get these days.  No, he's not sleeping too much during the day.  And yes, he's tired at night.  Going to bed isn't the issue.  He's the easiest of the boys to put to bed at night, but he never stays asleep.  In fact, he usually sleeps for about 2-3 hours before waking up for the night....yes for the night.  He's usually up for several hours before he will settle back down and sleep for another couple hours.

After dealing with this for a couple months and going in to the doctor time and time again thinking there is something medically wrong with him (ear infection and such) and only to find nothing wrong with him we were referred to the sleep clinic at Mayo.  On Tuesday he had his sleep consult with the doctor to come up with a plan and to see if he qualifies for a sleep study.  Turns out the sleep doctor is Dr. Kotagal...the same doctor Charlie sees when he goes to the NICU clinic!  So, Dr. Kotagal already knows Charlie, awesome.  After meeting with Dr. Kotagal it was clear that Charlie is a good candidate for a sleep study.  He was set up to go in for his sleep study on Friday.  But not so fast.  Dr. Kotagal wanted to check Charlie's iron levels since Charlie has had issues with his iron in the past.

So off we go to get Charlie's blood drawn.  We have the capability to check lab results online so on Wednesday I checked those and found his iron level came back at 16.  Now, 3 months ago his level was checked at it came at 35....ok, but not ideal.  They'd like to see it in the 50's.  So 16 is WAY low.  Dr. Kotagal said this could be part of the issue why Charlie doesn't sleep.  Well, 16, wow.  I guess that's why he's not sleeping.

I called Dr. Kotagal to talk about Charlie's low iron level because to me it was very concerning.  Low iron can affect many more things than sleep; development, motor skills, speech, organ development, etc.  Dr. Kotagal finally got back to me yesterday (Friday).  He said he'd like to cancel his sleep study for now since the iron level is likely the cause of him not sleeping.  He'd like to focus on getting his iron levels up and then go from there.  Since iron is slow to build up in your body Charlie won't have another iron check for 3 months.  Until then, he's on iron supplements twice a day and we will be adding as much iron rich foods as possible in his diet.  If his iron levels build but his sleep doesn't improve, then we'll look at doing a sleep study at a later date after his iron is under control.

So until then.....

Relax!  And enjoy the last days of summer!!