Amy’s mum felt, “she was probably being disturbed by us”. In addition Amy’s parents had to cuddle her to sleep every night……..which took 60 – 90 minutes.

Amy’s mum sent a recent update of family life after completing their sleep programme for Amy: “Now we put her to bed and walk away and she settles to sleep by herself with no trouble. She sleeps through the night and stays in her bed until we get her in the morning- AMAZING!”

To give you the heads up Mandy Gurney, co-founder of the Millpond Sleep Clinic and sleep expert for The Essential Parent Company, explains what to expect from your newborn’s sleep and how to establish good habits in the early days.http://mumstreet.co.uk/content/your-baby/sleep/newborn-sleep-and-what-to-expect/

Sleep Apnea among children linked to bed wetting

If little Johnny or Susie is wetting the bed frequently at night, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have a psychological or behavior issue. They might have a serious sleeping disorder.

A recent study that reviews existing literature confirms that the rate of bed wetting among children with sleep apnea is higher than than average but that the rate decreases with treatment from a tonsillectomy.

Anita Jeyakumar, MD, of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology at Louisiana State University’s Health Science Center, led a study that reviewed past research on any possible links between nighttime bed wetting in children and sleep apnea.

Jeyakumar and her colleagues used the medical study databased PubMed and Ovid to review all studies published from 1980 to 2010 involving children who had both a history of bedwetting and some type of sleep-disordered breathing, which usually refers to sleep apnea.

The researchers reviewed 14 studies involving a total of 3,550 children who had sleep apnea. About a third of these kids, or 1,113 total, also had problems wetting the bed.

Bed wetting normally occurs with about 2 to 15 percent of children aged 5 to 15, as an average since bed wetting decreases as children grow older. About 20 percent of 5-year olds wet the bed, about five percent of 10-year olds, and just one to two percent of 15-year olds.

The rate of bed wetting among children with sleep-disordered breathing was therefore much higher.

Because the children ranged in age from 18 months to 19 years old, it was likely developmentally appropriate that some of the children were urinating at night if they were not yet potty-trained, but the studies did not distinguish these kids from the others.

Scientists do not fully understand all the underlying causes of bed wetting, but some of the theories proposed were that children have irregular internal biological clocks, that they have unstable bladders or that bed wetting may be partly hereditary.

One of the primary treatments for sleep-disordered breathing is removing children’s tonsils, so Jeyakumar’s team also identified seven studies involving 1,360 children who had had their tonsils removed to address their sleep apnea.

The average number of patients in each of these studies was 194 children ranging from 2 years old to 18 years old. Among the total group, 31 percent (426 kids) had nighttime bed wetting issues.

After their tonsillectomies, 587 children had follow-ups and the rate of bed wetting issues for this smaller group was 16 percent (95 kids total).

The authors therefore concluded that a link does exist between sleep apnea and nighttime bedwetting and that giving tonsillectomies for these children statistically cut the rate of bedwetting issues in half.

William Kohler, MD, director of the Florida Sleep Institute and director of Pediatric Sleep Services at Florida Hospital Tampa, said the evidence in this study has borne out in his own practice with children who had bed wetting, also medically known as enuresis.

“I have had many patients that have had enuresis that was corrected when their sleep-disordered breathing was corrected with a tonsillectomy adenoidectomy,” Dr. Kohler said. “The enuresis is a known association with obstructive sleep apnea and correcting the sleep apnea will often correct enuresis.”

Dr. Kohler said another association not discussed in this paper with sleep apnea is sleep-walking, which will also often go away once the sleep apnea is treated.

There are other treatments for sleep apnea besides tonsillectomies and/or adenoidectomies, and removing a child’s tonsils and adenoids does not always resolve sleep-disordered breathing.

One standard treatment for sleep apnea is the use of continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, therapy. CPAP machines can cost anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to a thousand dollars, part of which can be covered by a health insurance plan.

One common side effect of CPAP machines is a build-up of gas in the stomach, which can cause some stomach pain and increase a person’s flatulence.

A tonsillectomy without insurance costs between $4,000 and $6,500. Side effects of tonsillectomies can include excessive bleeding, pain lasting longer than two or three days and scabs in the mouth that leave a bad taste in the mouth.

The study appeared online May 1 in the journal Laryngoscope. The research was internally funded at LSU, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Saint Louis University. There are no identified conflicts of interest.

All information on this site is provided “as-is” for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment. You should consult with a medical professional if you have any questions about your health. The use of any information on this site is solely at your own risk.

When you’re expecting, friends with babies will often tell you to enjoy your sleep while you can, or raise a knowing eyebrow if you happen to mention that you’re feeling tired. While we all know that the arrival of a baby will mean the end of long lie-ins and undisturbed sleep, it’s hard to know what to expect until it happens.

To give you the heads up Mandy Gurney, co-founder of the Millpond Sleep Clinic and sleep expert for The Essential Parent Company, explains what to expect from your newborn’s sleep and how to establish good habits in the early days. http://mumstreet.co.uk/content/your-baby/sleep/newborn-sleep-and-what-to-expect/

]]> http://www.mill-pond.co.uk/blog/2012/05/11/what-to-expect-from-your-babys-sleep/feed/ 0 http://www.mill-pond.co.uk/blog/2012/05/09/links-with-sleep-deprivation-in-children-and-obesity/ http://www.mill-pond.co.uk/blog/2012/05/09/links-with-sleep-deprivation-in-children-and-obesity/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 15:37:52 +0000 millpond http://www.mill-pond.co.uk/blog/?p=360 Mandy Gurney tells us why sleep is SO important to maintain your children’s health Sleep and obesity links

Also was GREAT to meet Professor Robert Winston yesterday – look out for him on This Morning ITV today.

The Essential Parent Company Sleeping DVD is introduced and narrated by Professor Robert Winston and is presented by our Founder Mandy Gurney

At weekends, he will happily stay in bed; he may wake up and have a quiet play with some cot toys, and then usually drops off again. Some days if our twins are also tired, we are a bit naughty and don’t get up until 10 or 10:30am!  So you can see my case is living proof, despite initial thoughts, you can get your lay ins back after children!

He still has a daytime nap. He is 19 months now and usually goes down around 11:30am and I get him up around 2pm, although often he is wide awake playing quietly.

He is so adaptable with his sleep now. On a swimming day as an example, I get him up around 8am to take the children to school, then get back and put him down at 9:45am so he’s not tired and grizzly in the pool. I tell him it’s time for sleep, thumb goes in mouth as a sign of acceptance and he goes straight off without a fuss.

At weekends, the twins can be quite noisy yet he knows it’s his sleep time and he accepts it, meaning they can carry on playing without us shhhhhh’ing them all the time.

So, in short, thank you soooo much for your help and support. Even the hardest of cases can be remarkably turned around. If you would like to use me as a reference, please do so. I have also recommended you to some of my
friends, so best of luck with your good work in the future!

We were in a very low place – grumpy with him and with each other.  All the joy was being sucked out of our lives and I couldn’t see how we were ever going to get it back.

Speaking to Evelyn reassured me and gave me hope.  She was so supportive and understanding, and explained to us what was probably happening.  We had a couple of tough nights with him as he got used to the new order of things but we saw an improvement almost immediately.

He still wakes from time to time but the 2, 3, 4 hour stretches of awake time are thankfully a thing of the past and he does sleep through more and more.

Thank you Evelyn and Millpond – you’ve saved our lives!

Joe would scream loudly when we left him in his crib at night, and developed a very distressing habit of vomiting within thirty seconds of us leaving the room.  We hoped it was a phase.  After four weeks we decided we were not happy to allow Joe to continue to lose his tea and milk every night.  So we gave him more attention, reading him to sleep, rubbing his back to get him to relax and placing our hands on him.  This coincided with him learning to pull himself to standing in the cot which added a new challenge – how do you settle a baby who vomits and stands up?!

My husband and I were suffering from severe sleep deprivation, we were both irritable, argumentative and felt at a loss.  I had read every book in the library and had started to feel like a bad mummy.  Christmas 2011 was a blur of no sleep so we decided to try Millpond. We found them on Supernanny’s website.

Juliet was very supportive and after our induction call recommended a few changes for us: naps and with a two week gradual retreat plan for night and naps.  We saw improvements very quickly and the gentle method was a relief after all the vomit.  Completing the sleep diary helped us to recognise the progress being made and the review calls with Juliet kept us honest and on track when things got tough.  It wasn’t easy/quick fix, and progress was delayed as Joe had a horrid cold and lots of teething a couple of weeks into the plan. BUT by end of Feb (eight weeks) Joseph was consistently sleeping 10.5-11 hours at night, and napping 1.5-2 hours per day.  We are still tackling the occasional 5am wakings but have a clear plan from Juliet.

We are now more confident in dealing with Joe at night and it’s great to know we can call on Millpond again in the future if we ever need to.  It is great to see Joseph without dark circles under his eyes with enough energy to get through the day.  I would highly recommend Millpond to my friends with sleepless babies.  I am definitely going to throw all my baby advice books away now.

Gillian Boundy