2 year old hospital stay

[MCMP13]

My 2 year old is currently in hospital, he is fine in himself still full of energy however his oxygen levels are low so is on oxygen and nebulisers at night.

My issue is, he isn’t a great sleeper at home but in hospital sharing a bay, he will not sleep, he wakes at the slightest of noise if we do manage to get him to sleep and when the other children are getting their observations done and crying it wakes him up and we are up for hours and to be honest it is torture. We’ve tried white noise as loud as we can etc

has anyone had anything similar? Any advice?

• I know they say he will sleep if he is tired but my child does not. It takes a lot. I’m not allowed to put him in pram and walk him as he needs the oxygen. There are side rooms available but the hospital are keeping them free

Just to add - he is the only 2 year old here so I feel like I’m the only one who has this problem. The rest are young babies or over 6

He won’t die from lack of sleep. It’s just a few days. With any luck he will be better soon and can go home.

could you gently ask the staff if there’s any chance you can go in the side rooms? Just tell them it’s really affecting you and if they can accommodate, they will. Sending you love x

I’m fully aware he won’t die from lack of sleep.

The only way we can go home is if he is asleep for over an hour with the monitor on and his oxygens at a certain level. This is not possible with the noise as if we do manage to get him to sleep, he wakes up and is back to square one and the timer starts again.

That's really crappy. In a similar situation when DD was 2 we had a private room, I'd push for that. If he's not sleeping, he's not getting well x

Talk to the staff they may be able to move you to a private room or if necessary get something prescribed to help him settle

This time of year, tend to need to keep the side rooms for 1)children with significantly contagious conditions, and 2)babies too young to be vaccinated. The problem with pushing for a side room if one is currently free is that you could then easily need to be moved out of it at 2am to free it up for someone who clinically needs it. And at that time of night there tend to be no cleaners available, so the nursing staff are taken away from looking after sick kids to clean the room for the new admission.

Can you ask if they have any ear defenders available? Or get on Amazon and order some to help tomorrow night. Or headphones (soft ones maybe) to play white noise/lullabies or whatever?

Thanks everyone. They saw it for themselves last night and he was moved to a side room. he was not sleeping and not getting the rest he needed which was making him worse x