Sleep Study... What You Might Expect!
Have you been wondering what to expect from a sleep study? Wonder what it might look to have your child ready for a sleep study? This week on the blog a look at ADHD and how my son experienced a sleep study. I didn’t know what to expect and write about how it went for us.
Sleep Study and What it was Like!
Like most parents I have been watching and listening to new about the connection between sleep and ADHD. With two children with ADHD I am constantly looking for ways to support my children and understand their needs. So with that in mind I went to my child’s doctor and requested a sleep study be done, to have a look at how his lack of sleep, which has always been the case for him. It took close to a year for a clinic to agree to take us and it was a lot of advocacy on my part calling back and forth to get answers on why they wouldn’t agree to do a study. In the end with our family doctor we found a clinic willing to see him and do an evaluation to see if he as study would be merited.
After waiting for months and seeming like we’d never get our chance, we finally got a call from a clinic in downtown Toronto willing to see us for a consultation. The consultation was long, almost 2 hours, and the questionnaire was 12 pages long but all that advocating, answering of questions and not giving up was worth it! On November 17th we finally got our sleep study night and what a night it was. I had no idea what to expect and even looking on line didn’t help me understand what we’d be in for. If you’re reading this know that it’s a long night, it’s an uncomfortable night for you…. But, at least my kid, slept!
This is my son all ready for a night of sleep. Surprisingly even with all those wires and tape he was able to sleep.
What happens first?
We were seen at the Youthdale Clinic here in downtown Toronto and it’s important to remember that the set up I am describing is only for their clinic. Each clinic will have a different set up. We arrived about an hour before our sons usual bedtime. He normally goes to bed around 8 PM so they requested that we arrive around 7 PM. We were shown to a dorm room style room with two twin beds. In the room there was a table with a two or three boxes which would be used later to connect him to the monitors. On the wall up high was a camera and red light camera so that the technicians could watch him as he sleep.
Once we were settled in our room we went down to get all the cords connected. A word on this from me, as a first timer to this experience. It was hard to watch my kid get hocked up to 100’s of wires. It took roughly 40 or 50 minutes to get him connected to the electrodes. He had one on each leg just below the knee to measure leg movement and then on his chest to measure heart rate. Once those were on the technician moved on to the face and head area. As you can see from the picture they were placed all around the face, jaw and head. The ones around the jaw the technician explained were to monitor if he ground his teeth at night, the face ones for to monitor facial movement and of course on the ones on the head measured brain activity over night.
Final piece that was placed on him were the noise prongs which would measure his breathing throughout the night. In the picture above you can see a little piece over his mouth, that was to measure his mouth breathing. Every time I thought she’d finished putting on pieces more wires would come out. Each piece was connected with a gel and tape to keep in place. Given that my son can be quite anxious I was amazed at how well he did sitting and waiting for it all to be done. Then I carried box to our room and tech plugged him in for the night. She turned on the night camera and said good night!
I was sure he’d never fall asleep. It did take almost an hour and half for him to get to sleep, and this is normal for him. He did wake up two or three times in the night, also normal for him. The tech had to come in three times to adjust the pieces around his nose and mouth, each time he pulled those pieces off. In the end I asked her to just leave the breathing part as we weren’t worried about his breathing, it was more about the fact that he seems to not sleep soundly. At 6:45 AM the tech came in turned on the light and then the process of taking all the pieces off… Not fun to have taped ripped off after it’s been there all night.
ADHD and sleep have recently been studied to possibly be connected
What happens next?
After waiting for what felt like forever for this assessment I am hopeful that it will give us some insight into what’s going at night. Is he getting restful sleep? Is the sleep restful and restorative? Is it possible that his ADHD made worse by horrible sleep? These are some of the answers we’re hoping for. I get that there’s not certainly to any of this, just more answers to help us support our child. We get our results just before the Christmas Holiday and we continue to be hopeful that we’ll get some sort of answer what’s been happening.
What got me most in the whole experience was how old school all this technology seemed to be. We can carry computers in our hands but when we need to monitor sleep use old school technology! I sure am hoping we don’t have to do this again.
When I work with families who are looking for support, I encourage them to seek every avenue to gain answers. It’s an exhausting job, going from place to place looking for support, but can be worth it. When children are struggling with anything from mental health, physical health or learning challenges it’s so important to look at the possible options. You never know what might be around the corner.
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