"Pinocchio Hotel"

Last night Ana had a sleep study done! Every since we adopted her, she has had sleeping issues off and on. She has no problem going to sleep (now), but most mornings she wakes up exhausted. Even after a good 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep. She can't make it through the day without a nap and is just overall tired most days. I've paid close attention to her eating habits and changed some things...but that hasn't helped. SO, when we moved here, I decided to push for a sleep study. WELL, we got it and when they explained to me what was going to happen, I was shocked! 25 probes were to be attached to her body, 10 on her head alone and the rest all over her body. SO, I knew I needed to come up with SOME WAY to make this fun for her! SO I have been reading the story Pinocchio to her. Explaining that he is a puppet etc. THEN I found the movie on VHS...so she has been watching it too! SHE LOVES IT! I waited until yesterday to tell her she was going to a "hotel" (she loves hotels) and they were going to dress her up like Pinocchio! Kinda like a Halloween costume! She was to have strings and everything...just like Pinocchio. So, we walk into the sleep lab and I pull the techs aside as Marc got her in her jammies and I told them the scoop. To REALLY PLAY UP the Pinocchio gig! Well, they did. And it was great.

They attached her "strings" with a Vaseline type of goop...they called it "string glue". She got to pick her "string colors"...lots of pink and purple!

When they put her "stickers" on her face they had to clean it first and they told her they were putting on her Pinocchio makeup! PERFECT! THEN they put that deal up in her nose and I was worried we were going to lose her so I told her that it was going to check to see if her nose grew throughout the night...she just laughed. Then it was lights out. As we were leaving her room she asked me if the Blue Fairy was going to come in and grant her a wish...I told her yes! She asked me who was going to be the Blue Fairy and I told her ME! She just smiled and then said, "Good Night Blue Fairy" and I said, "Good Night Pinocchio" and she was out in about 20 minutes. PERFECT CHILD!

Marc went on home and I stayed the night with her. The techs let me watch her monitor all night with them. These are her brain waves and that bed in the right corner of the screen was her bed. I had brought a project to do so I stayed up doing it and watching her. We couldn't check in until 8:15pm which is already 45 mins past her bedtime. Then it took until 9pm to hook her up to everything, so I was worried this wasn't going to be a really accurate study because she wasn't in her routine...but she did toss and turn all night and the brain waves did change though out the night. I was SLEEPY by 1am so they told me I could go lay down with her so I did. BUT they were in checking on her every 30 mins asking me to help attach a probe she "rocked off" or asking me to help untangle her etc. so I got very little sleep. They woke us up at 5 am to "take her strings off" and we were to be gone by 5:30am! Before we left they gave her this purple "string" to remember her "Pinocchio Hotel" night! She was so happy! We won't find out the results until next Tuesday when we see her doctor. Hopefully we will get some answers to help her get a rested sleep!

We got home around 6am this morning and she needed to take a hot bath to get all the "string glue" out of her hair. So I made it special for her. I made her a bubble bath and lit the candles ...put her in the tub and told her she was a "real girl" now with NO MORE STRINGS! I was exhausted and fell into our bed I told Marc she was all his. Mission complete with NO trauma! Glad it's over and now we wait for some answers...hopefully!! She was SUCH a good little trooper and was happy the entire time...I am so proud of her!