Our now 14 month old was diagnosed with SPD a few months back, but we've been coping with her exhibiting symptoms since she was a month and a half old. And of course we've been fighting with her doctors since about that same age. Most of symptoms relate to sleep and movement. Since she was just a few weeks old she couldn't sleep without very specific, constant movement, which unfortunately automated swings could not provide. Initially we just had to hold/rock her for naps with a lot of time being spent trying to get her to sleep and though soothing at night sometimes took an hour or so but she would sleep for 4-5 hours at time and getting her back to sleep wasn't as labor intensive. Then in April of this year, the daytime sleep issues progressed to the night as well. Most of the time it takes between 1-2 hrs to get her into a deep enough sleep to attempt laying her down. On average she stays down between 20-40min with another 40-60min of soothing between each wake up. This results in about 3-4hrs of fragmented sleep per night on her own; the rest is on us. My husband and I usually take it in two hour shifts which give each of us between 3-5hrs of sleep a night. To say we’re exhausted is the understatement of the year.
We just recently came back from a month of intensive therapy at the STAR Center in Denver and though she showed amazing improvement in language development and motor skills, her sleep still hasn't improved. We do think that she may have some food sensitivities exacerbating her SPD that we are working through with a specialist. Most of our family doesn't get the SPD thing and think it's all behavioral and that we are coddling her, so support is scarce. Has anyone gone through similar sleep issues? Did it get better with therapy or age?