What happened to her last night?

January 7, 2009

Can anyone tell me what happened to our little girl last night?

She ended her first round on Saturday (DMSA every 4 hours, 12.5 mg).

She's been sleeping through the night for at least a year now, but

last night (for the first time) it was like she reverted back to those

hard nights when she'd wake up repeatedly and grunt in this very, very

irritated, high-pitched grunt. Thrusting her legs/knees up and down on

the mattress vigorously . . . very frustrated. She has good verbal

skills (I think she's Aspergers), so I was confused about why she

wouldn't answer in words when I kept asking her what's wrong. She kept

violently pulling at her hands and fingers. We kept trying to ask did

her legs hurt? did her tummy hurt? Did her jammies itch? (A few times

she said " itchy,itchy, " but now I realize it was while she was pulling

at her fingers vigorously), did we need to take off her jammies? was

she too hot? None of this got the clear answers we would expect

ordinarily.

This happened in bouts. Awake at 12 midnight doing this for 15

minutes. Then again at 1am. Then again at 3am. We haven't had a night

like this since . . . her infancy? The only thing that made her be

still and quieted down her intense irritation and crying was when I

would sing to her. I thought I could sing her to sleep, since she was

obviously so tired, but no! When the song stopped, the behavior came

back. After this went on for so long, I brought her to our bed (hubby

went to sleep in the other room) so I could keep this up in a more

comfortable position.

This morning, before breakfast, she was making the same sounds (but

not the thrusting legs or hand-pulling). I knew she was tired from the

night before, but it had to be something more than tiredness.

It seems like zinc really helped. I put a little liquid zinc in her

vitamin c water this morning with breakfast(I usually don't because

her kirkman's spectrum complete already has zinc). From then on, no

more irritating tantrum or squealing. Yay!

**But what could have caused this? Is this her first " side-effect? "

Why did it seem like her hands and fingers bothered her so much,

without comfort or relief? I wouldn't have expected this to happen 3

days after the end of a round. She was really doing great before.

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