Articles

A Concerned Mum's Experience

Our little boy is nearly three years old and is only just sleeping through all night.  It has been a long arduous journey in which we have tried and tested absolutely every technique known to mankind to make sleep possible.  In October 2008, he was diagnosed with Restless Leg Syndrome finally, after about 18 months of long term sleep deprivation for our entire family.  

My understanding of Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) is that it generally runs in families and is exacerbated by low iron stores in the body.  My boy had a long history of barely eating and eventually became iron deficient.  This affected his behaviour, his sleep patterns and also his bowel movements.  The gastroenterologist eventually diagnosed this condition of whom I will be forever grateful to.

In 2007 we spent four days at Tresillian to assist with his night time awakenings.  This helped initially, however after a few months, he started waking again.  I went to our local GP and then paediatrician to seek help.  I was advised that I had a challenging child and that his sleep disturbances were entirely behavourial.  With three hundred dollars less in my pocket, and no further tests taken, I went home with absolutely no idea of what to do next.   

So I began sleeping with my child so that he would wake, see me, feel comforted and go back to sleep again.  He didn’t or couldn’t.  He would wriggle and toss and turn for three hours every night and then finally go back to sleep.  It was like he’d had a strong cup of coffee – he just could not stop moving every part of his body!  No behavioural strategies had worked after twelve months of trying so I began looking for alternative methods.  

In addition to this, I also had a newborn baby at the time and my husband and I would regularly be living on 1-2 hours of broken sleep/night.  I met a lady at playgroup who suggested I try an elimination diet – determined not to do this without the support of a good doctor, I drove well over an hour to Hornsby to see an allergy specialist, who was so overbooked she was unable to see me (despite having an appointment).  I began the diet anyway and noticed some improvement in his behaviour, particularly after we replaced his milk with rice milk.  After six weeks I went to my GP concerned his bowels were chronically loose.  At this stage I realized there was a connection between him having diarrhea and his sleep troubles.  A blood test revealed he had very low iron levels.  
After what seemed an eternity and several visits to our local baby health clinic, Tresillian, two GP’s, a paediatrician, a kinaestheologist and one attempt with an allergy specialist, we finally could pinpoint the problem.  It seemed that when the condition got so bad that physical changes were apparent, it prompted GP’s into action.  

My little boy was also slow to speak and within a few weeks of iron therapy he was communicating by words in leaps and bounds.  His eating improved and after five months of taking iron everyday, his sleep started to improve and waking in the night became more habitual than anything else.  This was easily fixed with the help of Sally Hall.  

I am writing this as I am concerned there are several parents who are repeatedly told by health professionals that their child’s night awakenings is behavioural – yet if behavioral strategies don’t work the first time, please suggest to your local GP for him/her to have a blood test.  I recently informed a paediatric nurse at our local child health clinic about RLS and she had never heard of it.  I found this disturbing.  

I am not a medical expert but a desperate mother who on several occasions left the family home in the depths of the night to avoid hurting my precious son.  Sleep deprivation is extremely dangerous for families and when parents think it is serious enough to visit doctors after trying several behavioural techniques; it really does warrant further medical investigation.     

A good website to visit for further information is: www.rls.org.au/pdf/ChildrenRLS2005.pdf

An article written by Lisa Collins June 2009

Parenting Challenges

Emily Perl Kingsley wrote the short article Welcome to Holland in 1987 (www.our-kids.org/Archives/Holland.html).  It describes her experience of having a baby.  The preparation period is compared with years of planning for a wonderful trip to Italy: reading the guide books; learning some of the language; imagining oneself at the sites there. The actual arrival of the baby and the years that follow is then described as landing in Holland.  

It is not that there is anything wrong with Holland.  The point is that it was not what was expected.  There’s a sense of disorientation; a need to get up to speed in a new reality.  And sometimes maybe a yearning for Italy – that image of what one imagined it would be like.

For some, motherhood is everything that one imagined it might be.  But for others, becoming a mother is very different to what they expected.  Emily Perl Kingsley says we get on with things and eventually learn to enjoy the wonderful things that Holland has to offer.  But that process can take time.  

Emily Perl Kingsley was writing about her experience with her son, Jason, born in 1974 with Down Syndrome.  The article has been reproduced countless times and translated into many languages.  Because?  Because it speaks of a reality for many, many mothers, perhaps.  

Whether the baby has a “special needs” label or not, it doesn’t alter the fact that some babies require a greater level of management than others.  A baby might be a fussy eater, temperamental sleeper, hypersensitive to stimuli, reactive to changes in routine and liable to “winge” and cry.  All babies are exhausting at times: such a baby is especially exhausting and requires greater input from Mum and Dad to help him/her negotiate the ordinary dramas of everyday life.

All babies give joy back to their parents.  But the smiley, cuddly, good eater and sleeper’s gifts back to the mother are more readily felt and more immediately nourishing.  The more aloof or fussy baby gives too, but sometimes Mum must learn a different language in order to receive these gifts.

If there is a special-needs label then there maybe support and sympathy directed towards you.  However, if there is no obvious cause to the apparent neediness of the baby, then there may be suspicion and judgment coming your way, shaking an already crumbling confidence.  In response, mothers can start to look for a diagnosis in the misconception that that might release them from blame.

I don’t mean to suggest that having a fussy baby equates to the challenges of a lifetime ahead with a child with a major disability. What I do want to do is to connect to the vein that the piece Welcome to Holland tapped into: in those first few months, or first few years, having a baby that you find extremely challenging (with or without a diagnosable disability) can feel like being in Holland, when your friends are in Italy.

The question: ‘Is there something wrong with my baby?’ is natural and, needs to be explored.  And the path to the answer might take you down many blind alleys.  But there is another important question sometimes forgotten: How do Mum and Dad respond to this demanding situation?  Do the parents have the confidence, support, energy and time to meet this challenge?  More often, Mum, for example, engages in self-criticism and self-doubt and becomes stressed and isolated.  Dad might respond to Mum’s heightened stress by withdrawing into himself, or into work, or shift his attention to the other children.  And so begins the possible reinforcement cycle, where the needy baby creates the stressed and strained parents, which potentially contributes to the baby’s neediness.

A family unit straining under the particular demands of a baby or child for a prolonged period can benefit from external help.  External help might take the form of extended family giving Mum and Dad a break and the opportunity to support each other; or additional domestic services to help in the home; or guidance on establishing routines and managing the baby.  Sometimes such practical support alone is not sufficient.  Sometimes the family, or Mum in particular, needs to be able to talk through the emotions evoked by the struggle, to have a place to discharge these emotions, and to begin to look at herself, her child and the situation in a new way.  Such emotional support can give Mum, and the family, more energy and enthusiasm to meet life’s challenges… and to find more enjoyment in Holland.

Sharon Murphy, Counsellor
mobile: 0425 244 492
Providing the option of consultations in your home
www.counselling-therapy-mediation.com.au