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Medication, Sleep Disturbances, and Other Things to Keep Me Up at Night

As many of you know, we started a trial of an anxiety medication for Jack called Tenex (technically, it's a blood pressure medication, but you get the idea).  After a month of seeing no results, minus knocking Jack out midday and - eventually - seeming to almost wind him up, we're switching to a new one.  Today.  A three-times daily med, no less, which will cause some logistical finagling as we try to figure out the best way to give that midday dose.

What we've been left with is sleep issues.

You have to understand, too, that this summer was supposed to be the summer of getting a handle on a few sleep concerns.  We wanted to transition Jack out of his crib early in the summer.  We bought this lovely new bed...

                                    Image may be NSFW.
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...which sits unused in his room.  We knew that the transition would be difficult because that's just how Jack is.  His anxiety over the novel and changes in his routine really throws him for a loop.  He's not really motivated by the typical kid motivations for moving to a big boy bed, like the motivation of actually being a "big boy" or "Mommy/Daddy/relative X sleeps in a big boy bed, so I want to, too!".  We had these grandiose plans of moving the crib out of his room and just making the leap to the big boy bed...but life got in the way.

Namely, Jack began this battle with anxiety meds.  Dr. DP felt that it was clearly time to begin exploring medication.  Jack was miserable, it was making therapy and school difficult, and my poor sweet boy's life seemed literally filled with fear.  It was a hard decision and one that we went back and forth over for a year.  We weren't sure we wanted to go down that path, but we knew one thing - our boy needed relief.  We also knew that nothing we did was helping at that point.  We had to do something, so we consented to starting meds.

Now, anyone who has gone down this medication journey will surely share a similar experience, but lucky are those who have success with the first medication they try on their children.  There were actually multiple doses of the first medication that we could try, which was selected because of its lack of side effects - other than drowsiness - compared to other medications.  We tried those doses, bumping him up to what would have been the equivalent of an elephant-sized dose, but it didn't put a dent in the anxiety.  If anything, we saw Jack's tactile sensitivity increase.  We also had a fun weekend of Jack breaking out in hives after we bumped up to the final dose strength, which was kind of the last straw for this medication.  Today, we're going to start a different med - one that is between the previous one and SSRIs in terms of side effects - with hopes that this will make a difference.

I guess we were foolishly optimistic that the anxiety meds would work quickly.  I guess we thought that - once they did - it would make this whole crib-to-bed transition easier.  I had these ideas in my mind of getting to snuggle with my boy in his bed, like I did once in this picture after he fell asleep midday due to the Tenex...

                                  Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

...but it wasn't to be.  We also don't feel like we can force more than one change upon him at a time.  After all, it seems like we would be setting him up for failure if while his brain chemistry is being toyed around with we were to also force him out of the only place he has felt comfortable sleeping - his crib.

I can say this...sleep issues with our kids affect the whole family.  I definitely feel like I'm running on fumes at the moment.  We've tried everything over the years to fully get a handle on Jack's sleep, from ordering oversized Halo SleepSacks to give him that pressure he needs to going on melatonin to bumping up melatonin to experimenting with various combos of snacks, routines, and whatnot.  The only thing we've not tried is sleep meds, and I'm not quite ready to go there...yet.

Dr. DP has also reminded me that, sometimes, there are no answers or solutions for our kids' sleep issues - that some kids on the spectrum simply need less sleep.  That their brains are wired and work differently than ours and that wiring may make it so that they run on all cylinders for longer than we do.

Not much consolation to a weary parent, but I get his reasoning.

With a little over 6 weeks to go in the summer, my plans for the summer of good sleep may have backfired, but that's okay.  I have to believe that - like with so many things - we'll get him moved to that big boy bed.  It just may take longer and we may have to be patient while the medication does its thing.

Sometimes, there are no easy answers other than our kids are going to do what they are going to do in their own sweet time.

 

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