Sleepless nights

Our daughter is just 3, and has been prescribed 2 types of inhalers (one preventive, one for immediate relief), due to a continual cough over several months. Since being prescribed the preventer, the coughing has improved, but she has changed from being an excellent sleeper to waking up during the night and being unable to get back to sleep. She is not really compensating this sleep during the day either, but actually getting up even earlier than before. This has persisted for 2 months now. My wife and I are incredibly tired, and have almost reached the end of our tether. Our daughter is tired, irritable and her behaviour has deteriorated. Bottom line is, we're desperate! Could this be caused by the medication? If so, what can be done about it?

Help please - we are sooooo tired .....

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I really sympathise with you all, my youngest daughter suffers with the persistent cough type of asthma, thought to be caused by house dust mite, mould spores and exacerbated by sulphites. It's really difficult eliminating all these from everyday life.....actually it's impossible! Therefore, my daughter has a preventer-inhaler twice a day, a long-acting reliever twice a day, and the ordinary Salbutamol reliever when required. She doesn't sleep very well either and is constantly waking during the night even when free of asthma symptoms. (When she does have asthma, sleep is out of the question for all of us in the household I'm afraid!)

We have tried everything we can possibly think of, done everything to eliminate triggers, given the medication, etc, etc and all I can really think is that they get used to the pattern of waking in the night when they have the cough and just can't get out of it again when they don't have the cough. Habit, or maybe even they're afraid of feeling asthmatic and that wakes them - it must be pretty scary when all's said and done. I did wonder if it was the steroid in the preventer inhaler, but it is extremely unlikely.

Whilst conducting all of these trials and numerous errors, I did notice that my daughter's consumption of products containing aspartame was quite high - it's in a lot of stuff, including her daily multivitamins - and one of the main problems with this sweetener is that it causes night waking and extreme behaviour. I have since cut all the aspartame from her diet (easy really when you know what you're looking for!) and her sleeping has indeed improved by a good 60% so maybe it would be worth looking into for you too.

Sorry, no answers for you but sometimes it's nice to know you're not alone. Best of luck to you all.