Sleep Study

Yesterday Tom went to the sleep disorders clinic in Wahroonga (SAN) hospital. The idea was to do a sleep study to test what it is that is keeping him awake all night. The doctor said it could be one of three things, restless leg syndrome which can be treated with drugs, nasal/adenoids which can be treated by removal or behavioural.
We pretended that Tom was going to be an astronaut and go up in a spaceship, and we wired him up to the machinery. He had pipes in his nose, electrodes on his head, a microphone under his chin and his arms and legs were also wired up. 36 wires in all, which was awful - way more than i had expected. Tom actually fell straight to sleep (i think he was in shock) but woke after about 2 hours and proceeded to cry, shout, get angry and then get distraught to the point where i had to tell the nurse to unwire him (after 2.5hrs of unrest), he was going home. So at midnight we came home and i felt awful for putting him through such an ordeal.
We did get a call from the clinic to say we needed to go see the ENT specialist which means they were able to get enough info and i suppose we'll need to remove adenoids, but for now we will just wait it out, continuing to take iron supplements as these seem to have made the world of difference.

update Oct '10: Tom now sleeps through 6/7 nights and we haven't yet been to see the specialist!

Dreamworld

We decided to take another trip to the Gold Coast and visit Aunty Angie and Uncle Jamie and cousin Sophie for the long weekend. However our trip was decidedly different this time around. Firstly, Ela got really ill - came down with a really high fever which turned out to be tonsillitis. Poor love spent most of the weekend on the sofa watching movies and taking antibiotics.
Secondly, the weather wasn't great. It was cloudy and overcast the forst few days and then sunny but quite cold after that. So there wasn't much swimming happening. Tom loved splashing about in the water but of course hated getting out. Mark and I got our laps in every day and he even sdid some running but there was no lazing by the pool sipping cocktails and reading books :)
We did venture to the beach too, but again it was short and sweet. The kids got their face painted one day and we enjoyed a local markets and music festival.

But the highlight of the trip was our visit to Dreamworld. Its only half an hour drive from the apartment, and it was pretty quiet as it was low season. We headed straight to Wiggles world and the kids went on Dorothy's rosey tea-cup ride, the Big Red Car ride through the Wiggles house and played on Captain Feathersword's ship.

Then we headed to the wildlife area to see Koalas, Kangaroos and Crocodiles. Tom was a little hesitant at first but soon got his shoes off and started patting the Roo!  After lunch Ela started to deteriorate again and Tom was getting ferral so we headed back home. But it was certainly a day to remember.

Then finally we had a few nightmares on our flight back to Sydney as it turned out to be an International flight en-route from Japan to Sydney. What should have been a few hours hop skip and a jump home turned into a four hour ordeal!