Sleep study - way overdue!

As they have been for most people, the holidays have been very overwhelming and I have barely been able to catch my breath, let alone update the blog!  Still, quite a bit has happened since my last post, so I suppose there's no better time than now to get this thing updated...

Caitlin finally went in for her sleep study on Dec. 20th!  Cherylle and I had been preparing for the worst after all the stories we'd heard - we were expecting to experience one of the worst nights of our life.  Because of this, we'd scheduled the study at a clinic in Bakersfield so we could a) leave Evan with his grandma while we took Caits to the clinic, and b) have grandma watch the kids in the morning while we finally caught up on the sleep we weren't able to get the night before.  

The first good sign came when we were given the directions to a Residence Inn to report for the sleep study.  No clinic beds for us!  We got to the hotel and were directed to the back of the complex to a two bedroom suite, where we met the tech.  She had set up her control center in the living room of the suite, with a separate laptop for monitoring each patient, and one for herself to stay occupied on the overnight shift.  There was already one patient checked in and (literally) snoring away in the other room when we got there, with a large bundle of wires snaking under the bedroom door and connecting to a computer, and you could see lots of little lines on the monitor moving up and down as he attempted to sleep.

As you can expect, Caitlin really was not interested in having lots of sensors poster-puttied all over her head, but they'd instructed us to not let her nap during the day, so she was too wiped out to really struggle.  She'd had one 15 minute power nap around 4pm, since we were driving across town from visiting my sister, brother-in-law, and Caitlin's cousin, but she already has a history of using power naps to avoid actually sleeping so it worked out perfectly.  It was now 10pm, way past her bedtime, and she was COMPLETELY exhausted!  She struggled and cried a little bit, but for the most part just sat there in my lap with a wounded look in her eyes...

Of course, despite the fact that we'd told the clinic that Caitlin was a baby, there was no crib in the room, so as soon as we arrived we'd asked the tech to request one from the hotel.  Fortunately it showed up just as the tech finished putting on all the sensors, so we were able to put Caitlin down right away.  She was really exhausted, so she griped a little about the stuff on her face, but with a little encouragement from mommy (and some gentle patting on the backside) she fell asleep.  We were blown away by how easy it had been, but decided to take advantage of it and curled up in the bed next to her and tried to fall asleep ourselves.

She fussed occasionally, but no more than usual, for the first hour, but around midnight she woke up full force, discovering (now that she'd gotten some rest) that she had stuff stuck to her face and started ripping everything off!  Fortunately the tech had spotted her waking up from the readouts and was in the room before Caitlin was able to do too much damage.  Cherylle and the tech worked together to get everything back on, and after about 20 minutes or so, were able to get her back to sleep.  She woke up a few more times, off and on, throughout the night, but not enough to interrupt the study too much, and never got more than the big breath sensor under her nose to come off...

Around 5 am, the tech came in the room and let us know that she had enough data on Caitlin's sleep patterns, and that we were free to go!  We got all the sensors off, picked up the diaper bag, and headed home, very relieved that it had gone so smoothly.  According to the tech, results usually take around 10 business days, so we should have them in plenty of time for Caitlin's next ENT appointment on Jan 23rd.

I'll try to get another one up with some holiday pics, and maybe even a little about our quick Vegas trip for those of you not on Facebook!  TTFN