Your sleep-study buddy guide

Real talk...what to expect from your kid’s sleep study experience

The only reason I can remember how long our child has been not-sleeping every night is because I know her age, and she’s been not-sleeping for exactly that long. Even when she was a baby, like 14 months old, she’d just be...awake. At 11pm, 2am, 5am. Not screaming or crying (she saved all that for the day time, hahahaha...hah...eh), just awake. And looking for company. 

She learned the word “grapes” because one night, in a futile attempt to meet whatever need I thought she maybe had, I took her downstairs and gave her a snack of grapes. “Geeps,” she called them. Very cute. Until the next night, when she was up again at 11pm or 2am or god knows when, and I walked into her room. Standing in her crib, wide awake, she helpfully offered: “Geeps?” Not as cute. She didn’t actually want the geeps (mm, now I kinda do though); she just learned that geeps was maybe a way to get some quality time with her old man while she was not sleeping and kinda bored.

Now, at age 7, the child still struggles with sleep. Which means we weary parents still struggle with sleep. We’ve chipped away at the problem with some medications and miscellaneous strategies, etc., but we’re at the point where we need to bring in the big guns: a big ‘ol official overnight sleep study, in which we shall use technology and modern medical interventions to see if there’s anything we can find and fix that will make this child sleep through the night on a regular basis. 

(Please, PLEASE no sleep tips or advice in the comments or elsewhere. Yes, we have already tried [thing you suggest]. That’s why we’re doing the sleep study. And I swear to god, if you tell me to try melatonin, I will drive to your house and do punching at you.)

In a sleep study, the sleepless patient goes to a medical facility, gets connected to 80 trillion wires, and sleeps (as best they can) overnight in a room. Their body generates a bunch of data, which is later analyzed by doctor people. Then they tell you whatever it is they find.

If that sleepless person is a child, a parent or guardian gets to be present for the sleep study. In our case, I drew the short straw.

My friends, here is what you need to know about enduring your child’s sleep study, and what you will experience:

You will have many questions and will receive no information ahead of time. The people just assume you’ve done this before and have seen the inside of the facility and can mindmeld with them such that you can replay their memories as videos and can thus see the whole process. 

You will have many logistical questions and will receive no logistical answers beforehand. Questions like, “Where am I sleeping?” or “What the hell am I supposed to do for four hours after my kids is asleep but it’s not yet my bedtime, because I’m a grownup?” or “Can I drink in bed like I do at home, or is that like...not cool?”

You will check your child into the facility—in our case, a hospital—and you will be led back to a series of rooms that looks like every hospital’s set of rooms you’ve ever seen, and the nice nurse person (let’s call her Irma) will point you to the room you’re assigned to, and you will see through the doorway that it does not look like a hotel room that happens to contain medical equipment—oh no, my friends, it will look like a regular examination room. Cold, austere, uncomfortable, and antiseptic but also not quite antiseptic enough. 

You will find out later that this room is not a sleep study room half the time—it has a different function during the daylight hours, which is why you will blanche when you see the place you are going to be sleeping. While your child is going to sleep in a medical bed that is ugly and not comfortable and yet too large for her, you are going to sleep in a glorified recliner that is definitely too small for you. The not-bed you’re sleeping on will be the least comfortable surface you’ve ever put your body on. At least it’s flat, I guess. 

There’s not even a fitted sheet for it—just a top sheet, which you will have to lay out yourself, and a “blanket” that is not actually a blanket, but a single square of one-ply toilet paper. You will wonder how you’re going to avoid overnight hypothermia, and half-joke that you wish you had some of those leads attached to your own body so the nursing staff will be alerted if you die in the night, hahaha. And just the one pillow? 

You will probably look in the cabinets in the room, expecting to find additional linens. Instead, you will find only emptiness and disappointment. Did Dostoevsky design this place?

Speaking of the leads—don’t forget about your child. Your child will likely be nervous and a little excited at first. That will give way either to intense curiosity or terror when they see the 80 trillion wires that will be attached to their body. Fortunately, my child was intensely curious. The bright colors of the wires may have helped.

But good golly gosh, Irma just. Kept. Going. With. The. Leads. I lost count of how many there were. Enough that the child will end up with all of the ones on her face and head gathered into a sci-fi-worthy Predator-looking ponytail of wires, including a nasal cannula and...like...a mouth guard kind of thing? You will not know why it’s on your child’s face, but she will definitely pick and pull at it constantly, and you will be concerned that the whole test could be thrown out if she rips it off. And she will be sure to make a goofy face when you take a picture of her in the getup.

It will take forever to get all of the wires and leads and whatever onto your child. You will silently groan when they put little dabs of sticky goop for the leads onto your child’s face AND HAIR, knowing that you’ll have to squeeze in a bath and shampoo in the morning, between when they rouse you at 6am (those BASTARDS) and when your child needs to catch their school bus at 7:30am.

The whole thing will feel a little like a prison. Sink. Chair. Hard floor and walls. Terrible bed. And when it’s lights out, you better shut your fool mouth, fish, or you’ll get the shiv from Irma. Probably. You may be too afraid to do anything but lay there quietly, playing Candy Crush on your phone at 9:47pm and wondering what you’re going to do for the next three hours in the dark. It’s a little lonely. You may consider sauntering out into the hallway to see if Irma has any geeps?

OH, and don't get me started on the internet situation. Zero cell service. None. Not one bar. Just an X. There's shitty guest WiFi, but it's as slow as you'd expect. You can't even get enough of that sweet internet juice to scroll through cringey memes on Reddit. Best case, you can stay in touch with the outside world via FB Messenger, which...I mean, gawd, no thanks.

ALSO. You are ON CAMERA the entire time, WITH AUDIO! Irma ominously told us that if we need anything, we can just speak it aloud, because they’re always listening. Ostensibly, this is so they can monitor your child, but it effectively means you can’t pick your nose, scratch your privates, or fart. And the loud crinkling of your gummy bear bag could result in a reprimand from Irma or whoever, which kind of makes your night candy less fun. 

Irma will enter the room kind of a lot. It’s jarring every time, because you’ll juuuust get lulled into forgetting that she’s there, and CREEEAK, the door will open, and a shaft of light will cut into the calm darkness like a plasma knife, and Irma will fix something pertaining to your child’s many wires and cables and whatnot. Then she will disappear along with the light. And it occurs to you that your partner really owes you one. Like, big time. 

You will sleep a few hours, and when they wake you up at 6am sharp, one or more of your body parts will be so cramped up that you can’t turn your head or torso or arm or whatever. They will quickly rip all the wires and whatnot off of your child and kick you out. You will stumble, pre-coffee, into the hospital hallway, meander to the exit, and pray you never have to do this again.