Possible sleep med

[Guest guest]

Sherri,

We started using Melatonin several years ago for to help him

fall asleep. It did seem to help him fall asleep faster but it

didn't help him sleep longer. He was still doing the 3:00 or 4:00 AM

thing. I considered giving him more Melatonin when he woke up in the

middle of the night, but I read something somewhere that advised

against it. We were giving him between .5 - 1 mg before bedtime.

is 13 yrs. and has pubic hair. He has no other body hair but

he does have light facial hair (and a few wild dark ones). I'm not

sure if the Melatonin is responsible for that or not. I had never

heard of early puberty as a side-effect of Melatonin before.

Coincidently did have a bone age study done last year and his

bone age was actually younger than he is chronologically. Go

figure! We stopped giving Melatonin when he started taking

the Mellaril and/or Zyprexa earlier this year. I have to say that

with the Zyprexa, he does sleep through the night on a regular

basis. What a relief! It had been so long since I slept a whole

night that I kept waking up even though he was sleeping. Ha!

Terry

Mom to , 13 yrs.

[Guest guest]

My son has Magenis Syndrome, and is very similar to all your kids with

DS/Autism. Children with SMS produce Melatonin at opposite levels of

" normal, " so they would like to sleep all day and be up all night. Many SMS

families use Melatonin at bedtime, but we've found the timed-release version

is of much more help than the regular Melatonin. We use the Melatonex brand

for Craig, which is 3 mg. and timed release. We were just at the national

SMS conference and Melatonin was a hot topic, but I didn't hear anything

about it causing early puberty.

Bev mom to Craig, 14, Magenis Syndrome