Mrs F sent the whole school to sleep!!!!

[MrsForgetful]

...well nearly....

i was HORRIFIED the other day when i was emptying out ds2's lunch bag to find our MELATONIN bottle in with his lunch remains!

Basically...in my usual chaotic panic that moring i had added the bottle to his lunch...and there was approx 70 capsules in it!

I know it would not have killed anyone....but i felt sick for hours about what could have happened....

luckily ds2 is so rulebound...and only ever eats 2 choc spread sands and a choc bicky and plain crisps...so totally ignored the melatonin... as he would any other addition i try to sneak in to tempt him!!!

Oh, Mrs F - it sound like the sort of thing i would do! Like you say, lucky that ds2 is so rulebound, just like my ds, although he would probably taken them to the headmistress or dinnerlady laughing his head off.

Just out of interest, how many melatonin capsules does he have at night?

ds1 takes concerta 54mg and as he's now 13...and staying up till 10 - takes 5mg melatonin at 9.30.(when he was going to bed for 9- i had to give him 7.5mg melatonin at 8.30- as his concerta was only just wearing off)

ds2 takes 2.5mg melatonin at 8- bed 8.30....sometimes he doesn't settle in the summer with just that (as still light outside????) so usually had a top up of 2.5mg at 10...

ds3 (not prescribed it as yet...but i do buy some for him and me off ebay...) does not have it every night (my DH won't let me!) but we have an agreement that if we put him to bed at 8.30- and he is still awake/restless/comes down after 9.30- then he has half a 3mg capsule...

i definitely notice that in the darker nights mine seem to need less.... so wonder if maybe their own body clocks are kicking in... but last night with ds1...being friday night... i lways let him stay up till late to watch a good film... as a treat... and i give him his melatonin at 10.30 then...and usually he is only just starting to yawn naturally at that point...

last month i made a mistake and ran out of it...so we had 4 nights with NO MELATONIN...and apart from the first night...they did not settle/sleep till gone 11....so proves the melatonin helps....and as ds1 used to be awke till 1am... even being able to fall asleep as he did at 11 without melaonin ...is such a huge improvement.

the paed did say that the child may start to have a bodyclock type sleep.... so assume that's why ds1 can sometimes fall asleep naturally after 11....but how long it would last...well...i don't know!

Oh, ds (9) has 9mg and find that even that is not working that well more recently. I give it to him at 7.30 for bed at 8 in the week and he doesn't usually fall asleep until 8.45-9, sometimes after that. He has a ritual where he has to go to the toilet at least 3 times before he falls asleep.

Then he then wakes very early: 5.45ish, reads or amuses himself until 7.30 until he can (more recently) play his gameboy at the weekends. God only knows if he will sleep on Christmas eve!

In the morning he has 25mg Strattera and 10mg Equasym, but only because he only weighs 4st 2 and they don't want to up the amount until he puts weight on as he was having heart palpatations, a side effect of Strattera. His heart is fine as i had it checked but i think this will begin to effect him again when they up the dosage.

Do you know what dosage they suggest for adults?