Middle of night wakes is going private for melatonin worth trying?

[1995SENNDMUM]

Paed wont prescribe melatonin as "nothing they can do for night wakes" and seemingly they don't consider 2 hours awake at night that bad (hit 3.5 hours tonight). Under LD nurses too who are doing a sleep plan and won't prescribe anything until that fails (don't know how long we have to try it for, it's not clear in the ICB policy to argue with them unfortunately).

Its been 2 years of sleep issues, he's 4 non verbal with a severe receptive language delay and hopefully will have an ASD diagnosis next week so all the classic behavioural change sleep training suggestions haven't worked.

Is it worth attempting to find a private paediatrician that would be willing to prescribe ? I know the NHS GP wouldn't agree to a shared care plan direct from them, but perhaps it d finally prove to LD/paeds that it could potentially work for him?

It is worth trying melatonin, I think. Whether that is via going private, pushing for a referral to an out of area sleep clinic or buying it.

Thank you, I hadn't even thought of the possibility of trying to get referred to a sleep clinic out of area I shall definetly find out if that's possible before we end up paying privately.

You will probably have to push for it, but it is possible.

Melatonin in great for helping a child get to sleep in the first place, but really doesn't help mine if he wakes in the night, and never has. Sorry, not what you wanted to hear, but real life use.

Agree with this.

It's perfect for getting them to fall asleep if their minds are too over-thinky - and as long as they actively try and sleep in the 30 minutes after taking it.

But doesn't work at all on getting them to stay asleep or getting back to sleep. It's not like a sleeping pill.

Same experience here, in fact we found DD was more likely to wake up after a couple of hours on melatonin.