2nd Sleep Study

I was really nervous for Maggie's 1st sleep study...and she did great.

So, I thought...no need to be worried about the 2nd one. Wrong.

Maggie jumped right on the bed, ready for something to eat and to watch a movie. This time she chose Horton Hears A Who? It wasn't long that the technicians came in to get started. It wasn't even 7:30 yet (compared to the 9pm start the 1st time), so I was a little surprised. However, they said they wanted to get her all set up because it will take a few times for her to get used to the CPAP mask. Ok.

Maggie did great with the initial set up - just like before. Until it was time to mask her. That was a whole other story. And that's when I got worried. She used to have daily breathing treatments so I knew that she didn't like anything being on her face. Those breathing treatments only lasted a few minutes - this mask was going to stay on for 7+ hours. It was a very small mask but when you're small, it seems huge. Plus the straps were huge and went across her face (almost covering her eyes) and then up and around her head. It looked similar to this:



Now, that's not too scary, is it?! Try and picture that on a 2 year old! We got it on her and waited a few minutes to actually turn the machine on. When we did, it seemed like all hell broke loose. Poor thing. She was screaming for me and kept saying "hurt, ouch, off". I'm not quite sure how long they let it run the first time (maybe 2 minutes) but it sure seemed like an eternity. They turned it off, but kept the mask on. That didn't last too long. We took the mask off and she was fine watching the movie again. Another 30 minutes passed and they said it was time to put it back on. She went into hysterics. I tried everything I could to calm her down - nothing worked. Turned it back off, took the mask off again and they were going to come back in when it was time to go to sleep. 9pm came and it was Groundhog Day all over again. Except this time - machine wasn't turned off and mask was left on. TV was turned off, iPhone (she was playing some games) was removed and no bottle to be had.

*Oh yeah - that was the 2nd part of this...when you're on the cpap machine, you can't be drinking anything or else you will choke. So, not only did she have this huge mask on her face and told to go to sleep but she couldn't have her "baba" either. Double whammy.

2 1/2 hours later (yes, you read that right) ~ she was so exhausted but still crying. She had not stopped. She couldn't calm down. I was just about to go and tell the technician that this wasn't going to work and we were going to go home (11:30pm). However, she came in and said, why don't we take the mask off, give her a bottle and see if that will relax her and then put it back on. Ok.

I'm NOT kidding when I say that in less than 1 minute of getting that baba, my sweet angel was fast asleep. Immediately I thought ~ now, why didn't we think of this earlier?!?!? We waited about 10 minutes and put the mask back on her while she was sleeping. She didn't wake up (she was OUT!) and I slowly removed myself from the bed and went to lay down on the fold out bed. I was exhausted. I was hungry. I had a horrific headache.

At least once an hour, Maggie woke up screaming. She normally wakes up a few times in the night but never screaming, so I can only assume that it was the mask scaring her. It was a looooong night, poor thing.

They woke us up at 6am, took everything off and we were back home by 7am. Immediately put Maggie in the tub to get her cleaned up of all the goop. Ate some breakfast and then I headed to bed.

I called today for her results, but they're not in yet. I was told to call back next week. Hopefully we won't have to wait nearly as long to get the results this time.

IF the test shows that she does indeed need to be on the cpap machine, I just don't see how in the world she is going to wear it. Maybe it will be better being at home, in her own bed....one can only hope! Our hope is that it won't be needed, but I don't think that's going to be the case.