Enjoying Some Extra Rest

Unfortunately the cooler nights have brought along with them a cold to the girls. It started with Braelyn about a month ago and has since been transferred over to Gwendolyn. Luckily, we think its stay at the Castellano house is nearly complete. Share and share alike we guess.

We did leave a message for the Pulmonologist in case he feels as though the past 10 days of increased stuffiness will affect the results of Gwen’s current month-long, at-home sleep monitoring study. We haven’t heard back yet but we think this week is supposed to be the final scheduled one of the study so we should know soon if there’s any recourse based on her cold.

As for how Gwen’s been sleeping thus far… From a highly non-medical perspective, she seems to be having positive sleep patterns. Thus far, about 2-4 times a night she beeps off but when we go into reset her apnea monitor, she’s already breathing at a regular rate. So yes, she’s still having spells and anytime someone stops breathing for more than 12 seconds at a time, its concerning. That being said, whether it’s her on her own or as a result of the noise from the monitor's beep rousing her, she continues to self correct and begin breathing normal again. The period she’s had congestion from this cold aside, Gwendolyn also seems to have less frequent spells during the course of the night. We theorize that as she matures, she grows stronger and stronger.

When we first had her on a pulse-oxi meter (a less sensitive version of the current apnea monitor) at home following her spring bout in the hospital, she’d often beep off +5 times a night. However, as the time has passed, the frequency has diminished. For instance, one of the first nights Gwen was on her apnea monitor for this study, she slept through without an occurrence. Last night, as she’s finally begun to shake the cold, she just had one occurrence. During the course of her cold, Gwen honestly had closer to four spells a night than two. So who knows what it all means. In the end, that’s just the hopeful observations of her parents not that of a trained medical profession so we’ll just have to wait and see.

As for the topic of sleep, Braelyn has been a big fan of Daylight Savings Time (or as we call it Brae-light Savings Time). Unfortunately, photos like this one of her taking an afternoon cat nap are few and far between because she just hates to miss out on ANYTHING... So, an extra hour of sleep in the morning is a definite plus for her.

We have the representative that Gwen's stander was ordered from coming back today. For some reason it still doesn’t seem to be fitting her correctly. However, as you can tell from the lead photo in this post, Gwen still had some quality time in the stander this weekend and Braelyn was even on hand to help out... As you can also tell, that play time in the stander came shortly after breakfast so please excuse their bed-heads.

Now that’s what sisterly love is all about!!!