Infantile Insomnia

From the time he was two months until he had his four month immunizations, my son slept for an average of three to four hours per session during the night. He would wake up, drink a bottle and then go right back to sleep. During the day, he would take a nap in the morning, one after lunch and another in the evening. He totaled approximately 12 to 14 hours per day.

Once my son got his four month immunizations, he started running fever. The day after his shots, his temperature was 103.6. That night, he didn't sleep well, but I didn't think it was anything more than just discomfort from the shots; however, his sleeplessness continued for a month.

When I began to realize that he wasn't sleeping normally anymore, I started keeping a sleep journal for him so that I could keep track of how much he was actually sleeping per day. When I totaled the amounts from the first day, I was absolutely shocked to discover that he only slept for five hours total. At night, he slept only 30 to 45 minutes and then he would wake up for at least two hours. I continued to track his sleep patterns for a couple of weeks with the hope that he would start to sleep more. Much to my dismay, that didn't happen. After coming to that realization, I decided that it was time to call his doctor.

I brought the sleep journal that I kept to his appointment. The doctor took a look at it and checked my son thoroughly. Once he determined that there wasn't anything that would cause his sleeplessness, he diagnosed him with infantile insomnia. I had no clue that infants could get insomnia.

As soon as I knew my mother was off work the day my son was diagnosed, I called her. Much to my surprise, she told me that I had the same thing. My insomnia was so bad that I had to be put on sedatives to sleep from the time I was and infant until I was three years old. She said that I would stay awake for so long that my body would actually shut down to the point that I couldn't move.

With the help of his doctor, we are going to try to get my son on a sleep schedule and see if that helps him to start sleeping better. We are wary of putting him on medications to make him sleep. He has been on the sleep schedule for about a week now and so far, we have had two days where his sleep has totaled 12 hours in a single day. That is a huge improvement for him, so we are going to continue this for a few more weeks to see if he starts to sleep normally.