Tryptophan-atics

As many of you know, getting our child to sleep through the night has been the greatest challenge we’ve faced to date. In fact, Olivia has only managed to completely sleep through the night one time during her two and a half years plus of earthly existence. Amazingly, our daughter is impervious to her erratic sleep patterns. I wish I could report that her parents were similarly unaffected, but sadly and sleepily, that is not the case. As the antitheses of Rip Van Winkle – i.e., good-for-somethings who do not sleep for an extended period of time – Beni and I are constantly seeking some shuteye and a solution out of this quagmire.

We’ve consulted with numerous doctors, read countless books, and spoken with many parents about our sleep situation. It seems as though we’re now cycling through things we’ve already tried before in hopes that they’ll work this time around. This week’s attempt comes from a section on sleep-inducing foods in Dr. Sears’s book Nighttime Parenting. He writes that the amino acid tryptophan (which by coincidence ranks second to phenylalanine as my favorite amino acid) may turn out to be nature’s own sleeping aid. Studies have shown that foods rich in tryptophan – e.g., warm milk, cheese and crackers, a bowl of cereal with fruit, peanut butter sandwich – can help induce and maintain sleep. And so all week, we’ve feasted on tryptophan the hour before we try to settle Olivia down for the night.

The top picture is a structural representation of tryptophan. The other two pics are of Olivia drinking liquid tryptophan, or more specifically, “hot chocolate” (the hot and chocolate aspects of the drink are debatable – what’s not debatable is that this ruse got her to consume warm milk).