My Daughter's Disturbed Sleep

by Benjamin

My daughter is one year and four months old. I believe she has had more nights of disturbed sleep than normal sleep in her life thus far. From bacterial/viral infections, teething, sleep apnea etc, she seems to have seen it all. Some months ago (before her first birthday) after the sleep apnea episode, an x-ray was done and we were told she had adenoids with a narrowing of the post-nasal space and were asked to operate. I sampled advice from other doctors, online info and family because I was concerned about doing such an operation on a small child.

In the end, we decided against it opting to use anti-biotics and anti-histamines until hopefully she outgrows it or it was much safer to operate. Another doctor told me that research showed that a baby faced greater risk of developing asthma after an early adenoidectomy (don't know how true this is but my brother is mildly asthmatic and he had adenoidectomy at an early age) and there was no guarantee that it won't grow back. Her apnea vanished after her infection was treated.

However, recently my daughter started having disturbed sleep with short loud yells or cries/bed-rolls periodically. Teething was suspected due to swollen gums and high temperature but days have passed and no tooth has appeared. The high temperature has also stopped. She also has a tendency to make a lot of fuss for water at night (her consumption of water is quite high) hence making it difficult to know what she's yelling for.

I noticed that when the air conditioner is on or when she's sleeping on her swing she is less likely to have tantrums. But I know it's not good to leave the air conditioner on overnight so I let her do her thing. We took her to the doctor and was told she had a slight ear infection and was given augmentin. However, he wasn't certain that this was the reason for the frequent night tantrums. She seldom cries while sleeping during the day.

We need your help. Our daughter is complicated. There seems to be so many reasons that disturb her sleep at night. She also seems to be quite irritable and hot-tempered when she doesnt get her way. Most nannies we get are usually perplexed then frustrated because she hardly allows anyone to get quality sleep at night and this tends to strain relationships and productivity. Finally, she also has a poor attention span. Do you think this could be due to disturbed sleep she gets or adenoids?

Please your kind advice is desperately needed.