Sleep, sleep, wonderful sleep: Parasomnia and lack of iron
We have been experiencing some strange occurances at our house during the night. This ole lady is mainly begging for a good nights rest. The culprit is two year old Little Mak. She has been experiencing some seizure like activity during the day time in the way of staring off, etc. and then experienced some night time (after going to sleep) episodes that caused enough concern for us to seek treatment. Her pediatrician did an initial evaluation and referred her to a pediatric neurologist.
The appointment with the pediatric neurologist went well overall and was quite lenghty with them gathering as much information about her spells or episodes as they could. What was discovered is that a lot of what we described she does at night such as talking in her sleep, sleep walking, thrashing about, frequent movement and jerking is actually called, parasomnia.
You can read more about parasomnia here from the Sleep Foundation.
The doctor ordered a lab drawn of her iron level and suggested that perhaps the parsomnia could be coming from a reduced iron level. The blood draw was dramatic for my little darling who has many idiosyncrasies to begin with. She cried the whole way home and even after (45 minute drive mind you) that she had blood on her. Of course there was no blood on the drama queen but you couldn't convince her of that.
The neurologist called us with the results the next day. The target level for iron is assigned a numeric equivalent of 50. Her level registered a 24. A recommendation for iron supplements was made and he was going to have her pediatrician call in something to our pharmacy.
The go to for iron supplements for children tends to be a nasty tasting liquid. I knew that with this finicky girl that would never do. I went on a search and found something that the doctor was impressed to find out about.
I purchased it and she loves the taste and after a few days now we are actually sleeping better already. Vitamin Friends Gummies Iron has been a blessing so far. I can honestly say it is kid tested and doctor approved. My girl loves the gummy type of multi vitamin and will take those well so I knew I had to have something other than the horrid liquid supplement. Let's face it, if they don't like the taste and it is a fuss to get them to take it, it just doesn't work well. She loves the SmartyPants Gummy Vitamins. They are available on Amazon Prime and can be bought with the new Amazon Mom program.
There are still some other issues going on with Little Miss Mak with seizures that will be addressed with an EEG and MRI later on. I will keep you posted. For now, we are thankful to be getting a little bit more sleep at night.
