Does anyone have an autistic child on Melatonin? Or very severe sleep problems?

[queryremelatonin]

Namechanged as DS's sleep problems are so severe atm that this would out me. DS is staying awake for long periods with absolutely no sleep -a day, all night and the next day basically. So he goes about 36 - 40 hours with no sleep at all at a stretch. This is going on for almost 2 weeks.

We have tried upping his usual sleep medication (Vallergan/Alimemazine Tartrate) and he had valium - no sleep.

Started melatonin kidnaps syrup yesterday evening . He slept less than 1 hour.

Dose is 3ml (so 3mg). He is about the size of a thin 6 year old. We are meant to try this dose for 3 weeks.

My question is, is this the "right" dose to be effective?

Is there anything else anyone has used in a similar situation that actually worked?

DS also has Down Syndrome, is physically disabled & visually & hearing impaired.

His problem is getting off to sleep, staying asleep is generally fine.

Kidnaps Melatonin 1mg in 1ml is what we have. Have done a search on here but can't work out much from the previous threads. Brain not exactly functioning well at this stage!

I think it depends on the child as we started on 3mg and are now on 6mg as he has grown bigger.

DD1 has 3 ml of kidnaps, she's a thin 8 year old (9th centile for weight). Dosages vary, and of course if someone starts on 10mg goes to sleep it might seem to be the 'right' dose when 5 mg would have done, etc.

Thanks for the replies. DS is a very small 12 year old - 1st centile. The thought of having to spend 3 weeks with him like this at what could be too low a dose is not a good one.

Is there a cumulative effect? That the melatonin takes a few weeks to work if there is a deficit?

Or did your child sleep better as soon as you started? It's done nothing so far. Hard to think straight about it at this stage but I'm thinking we need to go back to the GP sooner than 3 weeks.

It's got a 45 minute half-life, so as far as I'm aware there is no cumulative build up.

DS takes 4-6mg a night.

It works, but I've found that it works better if he doesn't have the same dose every night - weird.

Thanks. That's a very short half- life. It's certainly doing sweet feck-all in the last hour

I will bear that in mind about the varied dose maybe helping. This extreme non-sleeping has come out of the blue so I'm casting about for ideas.

Unless he's just really upping the protest against Christmas this year...

Thanks very much Hothead, I'll go back on Monday and ask for a higher dose to try and break this cycle. As you say, it can always be reduced.

He's awake since 630 yesterday morning apart from that one hour now so quality of life is certainly gone. We can't do a thing.

DS had a similar sleep issue last year. Melatonin didn't help, but phenargan syrup helped. Since then we use it every time he shows sign of bad sleeping pattern. But luckily it has not been that often.

Thanks someone. Phenergan didn't work too well for us but vallergan has worked for years. When the sleep issues were chronic but less extreme than this. It's just suddenly become not enough / stopped working. I feel like someone has given us a placebo by accident! He's still taking vallergan along with the melatonin ATM. He has finally dropped off now.