So.... Stephen had his sleep study, as I posted before, and here are some pictures. This one below was taken before he was hooked up to anything, perfectly happy to be goofing around WELL past his normal bedtime.
And then we have this. You can kind of see that Stephen has his lower lip out here - he wasn't sad, though. He was trying to use his lips to push the sensor off before resorting to ripping it off with his hands. Stephen HATES to have stuff on his face. :-(
He managed to tear all of the face stuff off, and ended up in the splints, which didn't really affect the results at all. We all headed to visit with a sleep psychologist on Tuesday, who revealed that he really couldn't do much for us, as the preliminary sleep study results said that we are looking at sleep apnea again. Stephen was averaging 11.6 apnea episodes an hour during REM sleep, which is what causes him to wake up so early. And whatever sleep he gets isn't very restful at all. As soon as we got home from this appointment, and got Stephen off to school, I got on the phone with our pediatrician's nurse, who put me in touch with the Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor that took out Stephen's tonsils and adenoids 3+ years ago, and I managed to get an appointment for mid November. Hopefully we can get this figured out soon so our little boy can get back to the business of being a little boy, instead of a sad sack of exhaustion.
In the meantime, we enjoyed a great evening of trick or treating! Stephen dressed as Pablo from The Backyardigans (of course!), and this is the ONLY picture of him wearing the head piece. This was also our first attempt at taking the "talker" out into the neighborhood.
Stephen used his talker tremendously well, and we are so proud of him for that! We didn't have an opportunity to practice beforehand, but I did show him the buttons he would need so that he could do it easily. We marched up to the first house, and I reminded Stephen what he needed to do. He said, "Trick or Treat!" "Thank you," "Happy Halloween," and then because no one knew what he was dressed as, "I'm Pablo!" He repeated this at every house with almost no prompting, and our neighbors were just thrilled to hear his "voice." This even gave us some new ideas for encouraging him to use it at school as well, which the Speech Therapist is excited to implement this coming week.
Stephen also got a new swing this week - it is an early Christmas present from his grandparents who wanted him to be able to enjoy it while the weather is still nice. He really likes the back support, but it's certainly more independent than his previous swing, which he is now too heavy to use. Hopefully he will continue to remember to hang on!
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