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Sleep...

If only we could get sleep... 'yawn!' (of course, rather than sleeping when both girls are asleep, we are frantically trying to actually get work done and here I am blogging!) Ana still gets up 1-2 times per night to nurse. Gracie has been sleeping terribly, culminating with spending 5 hours straight last night whining and not able to sleep. We assume that this is from her lamictal which has a common side effect of poor sleep. But, it could be from any number of things as she can't tell us what's wrong. Does she have pain somewhere? An infection without fever? Even a broken bone? We don't know!! It's so frustrating to have a non-verbal kid just whining, knowing that we could be missing something serious. It's even more frustrating for her, I'm sure, to not have us meet her needs. Needless to say, she gets tylenol sometimes, even if we're not sure that she really needs it, just in case she's whining because of some discomfort.

I'm looking into melatonin for her - some studies postulate that it even has anti-seizure effects. Any of you using it with your epileptic kids? She's on lamictal and keppra now at hefty doses, last seizure was nearly two weeks ago. But if she keeps sleeping so poorly, she could have a seizure just from sleep deprivation! (let alone the sanity of her parents!)

Please pray that the girls would settle into sturdy and sustainable sleep patterns! Gracie doesn't nap, Ana takes two short naps, so getting things done is quite a challenge, especially when it takes two hours to get Gracie to sleep, so that golden time between 8:30 and 10:30pm that we used to have to get things done while the kids are sleeping has vanished!

I'm taking biostats for my master's in public health degree this semester, and, even though I've taken it 3 times in the past (in each prior level of education - college, med school, residency), it's quite a challenge! My brain just isn't made for that kind of stuff!

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