Sleeping beauty

In an earlier post I wrote about "Sleep, or the lack thereof" which talked about how Kimmie did not sleep much as a baby. Her tendency to not sleep lasted until she was six years old. When Kimmie was six the doctors decided that she was ADHD and we needed to get this under control so she could benefit more from school.

Different medications were tried including one that is a blood pressure medication that has been around a very long time. The idea was that this would chill her out a bit, slow her down. The first day I gave her the medicine she was sound asleep within an hour. Since I had not been told this might make her sleep, I called the doctor's office to make sure she was ok. They assured me this often happened with the medication. I wondered how they expected her to benefit from school when she was asleep. We were advised to switch to giving her the medication in the evening, instead of the morning.

I told the doctor later that I did not know if this was helping at all with the ADHD, but for the first time in her life she was going to sleep at night and regularly sleeping through the night. I figured that if she was sleeping better, surely that would help her learn better at school. The doctor agreed.

Kimmie continues to be a good sleeper. As she moved into her teenage years she became even better and often sleeps 15-18 hours straight on the weekends. She has to get up so early for school, that by the weekend her little body needs to recover.

When Kimmie started sleeping better, Dad and I felt like new people as well. Over 6 years of being up night after night for hours on end was wearing us out.

We call her "sleeping beauty" now because, left on her own, she will sleep and sleep and sleep. She looks so peaceful when she is sleeping.

--Mom