Sleep Study and Thunderstorms

I can finally sit down and write about Rachel's sleep study!

First, we drove through a nasty thunder and lightening storm on our way to Winston-Salem. I swear there were bolts hitting left and right of us on the highway. The rain pounded down so loudly on the car roof and the streets in W-S were flooding. But, Rachel slept through it all. I guess she knew how little sleep we both would get so she was getting as much as she could in the car.

(at this time you are probably wondering where the pictures are)

Our appointment was at 8pm, which is well past Rachel's bedtime of 6pm. I had to go alone because they only had room for one parent. Rachel was still in an OK mood when we got there but as soon as the technician started messing with her head and putting sensors on it, she flipped. Oh man, I wish Stephen was there to take video or pictures or something because she was a sight. They use this putty stuff to attach the sensors to her head. It's almost like spackle. So picture her red in the face, screaming at the top of her lungs with tears in her eyes, snot coming out of her nose, failing backwards and rubbing this putty stuff all over both of us while I'm holding her as tight as I can so she doesn't fling herself out of my arms. Yes. That was fun.

(now you know why there are no pictures)

I think, all in all, she had eight sensors on her head, two on her chin, two on her chest and one on her back. They put a netted stocking on her head to keep the sensors in place. She also had a small nose tube that kept track of her breathing. Rachel looked like a beat up homeless person. And now, after all that, she was supposed to go to sleep. They set up two hospital beds side by side. I have never slept with Rachel before and I don't think I ever want to again. She is noisy and moves entirely too much (which is one of the reasons why we got the study done). My job, until 5am, was to make sure she didn't pull anything off her face. Nice. I think I got one hour of sleep. She likes to suck on her fingers to calm herself and every time she needed to do that she would rake down her face with her fingers and pull at the tube in her nose. Every. Time. And every time I had to stop her and hold her hands and keep the pacifier in her mouth instead. I was a glorified pacifier holder. At 5am the technician turns on the lights and politely tells us to get lost. We won't know the results of this test until the end of the month. A doctor has to review it. I"m not sure what they will find. It seemed like, to me, she never really got to sleep and so the test won't really show her issues. But who knows. If we ever have to do this again, it will be Stephen's turn to go with Rachel.