New and nervous....anyone use melatonin?

[Bluesunbeam]

Hi,
Ds is 6 and has no dx yet but he's a complex little man! Sleep is unbelievable, goes to bed at 8 and takes between 2 and 4 hours to fall asleep, wakes 2 or 3 times screaming but settles easily and then usually up by 5 am.
Dev paed has given us a prescription of melatonin this morning but forgot to ask about side effects etc. Anyone use this or have any idea of side effects?
Not sure I like the idea of drugs but am so tired and coping with his behaviour and tantrums during the day is pretty hard.

Hi and welcome.
There are no side effects to Melatonin that I know off, as it's a natural hormone. It's what everyone has in their body to help them sleep.
DS2 has melatonin and sleeps much better having it, never drowsy.
Good luck using it.

Hi - no side effects other than drowsiness

DD1 used to take hours to settle to sleep. Now she wants to go to sleep within 5 minutes of taking her melatonin liquid. She only takes 2 mls before bed. It doesn't stop the early waking unfortunately.

Thanks to you both, that's a relief. We are going to be getting capsules and have to open them and put in jam/yoghurt! Liquid sounds much better but getting anything past his lips is pretty difficult. Probably take a week or two to get him to accept the medicine.

DS2 is on the tablet form and took us ages for him to take them properly,a s they only work when taken whole.

Good luck!

good luck
dd has it and it is brilliant, she is on meds that give her insomnia, and we have had no side affects from the melatonin

We use the capsules, we empty 2 2mg caps into a drink of orange. (we have a DS with ASD who is 6) He accepted it as part of his routine very quickly, we were suprised! He also refuses meds generally. So you may be OK, as long as it is given in the same format every night at the same time etc. We call it his magic drink lol.
We have not noticed any side effects, and school say he is a lot more settled during the day (cos he is getting more sleep probably).
It is a synthetic hormone that occours naturally in the body, so I don't have any worries about giving it to him. I did initially worry about the morality of drugging my child to sleep, but I soon got over that when we started getting our evenings back!!!
HTH

We used melatonin with our dd which was fine to get her to sleep but did nothing to keep her asleep, although you can redose in the night, so the paed swapped her to slow release melatonin which unfortuneatly made things much worse as she reacted badly to them and had terrible night terrors and hallucinations during the day which can be a very rare side effect of melatonin, trust my dd to be the one in a million who reacts, just to reassure every other child that i know has had really good results with melatonin so look forward to a good nights sleep.

We give it every night - about 2mg in pill form which he basically eats up crunchily with a bit of water. Magic stuff, no side effects. He is 7 and autistic - it has given us our evenings back, crucial to sanity I think!

Both my dd's take 3mg each night, dd2 used to take 3 hours to settle and now she takes 30-45 minutes to settle, i didn't realise how good it was until we ran out for a couple days last week and we returned to night time hell.

Thank you Ladies
Feeling better about it now and hoping it works as well as it did for your Dc.
Chemist has to order it so will be a couple of days yet! Hoping extra sleep makes the days more manageable, less tantrums and upsets over the slightest thing!
Off to start the long drawn out bedtime routine, hopfully not too much screaming!

Melatonin is a miracle lifesaver!!

My DD used to have violent tantrums for 3 hours after bedtime, now she drops off after about 30 mins on 3mg...no side effects