Anyone who has had a baby will know the difficulties of putting a baby to sleep. For many parents, the process can be extremely difficult and can involve hours of endless lullaby singing and cradle rocking.
Alexandra Metelkina, a mother from Russia, didn’t have this problem on one particular day. She had finally managed to put her 6-month-old daughter Anya to sleep for her lunch time nap. To Alexandra’s surprise, it went a lot quicker than it normally did.
As Alexandra watched her baby girl sleep peacefully in her cradle, she was completely unaware of how serious and dangerous this sleep would turn out to be.
Hours passed, and little Anya still hadn’t woken up from her nap. This was very unusual as normally, any hint of noise would wake the baby up.
After some time, Alexandra began to realize that her daughter simply wasn’t waking up. She then tried to wake her up herself. When she realized her child still wouldn’t budge, she began to panic and desperately tried to shake her back awake.
This was serious – she called for an ambulance.
At the hospital they seemed confused – the doctors were unable to wake little Anya up. She was alive and not in a coma, and they couldn’t find anything wrong with her. She was just in a deep and long sleep.
The sleep continued for about a week and then miraculously, Anya woke up as if nothing had happened, The Sun reports.
Several tests were made on the baby and once again, nothing was found.
Alexandra and Anya were released from the hospital, but the next day the same thing happened again. Anya fell asleep and Alexandra couldn’t get her to wake up, no matter how hard she tried.
This turned into a reoccurring event. Sometimes Anya would sleep for weeks without eating or drinking. When she would wake up, she would be bright red with a low body temperature and a high fever.
Physicians are still looking for answers as to what may have caused Anya’s ‘hypersomnia’.
Anya’s condition has been officially recognized as ‘hypersomnia by an unknown cause’. She does also share symptoms resembling Kleine-Levin Syndrome also known as ‘Sleeping Beauty Syndrome’.
The KLS Foundation defines the condition as “a rare and complex neurological disorder characterized by recurring periods of excessive amounts of sleep, altered behavior, and a reduced understanding of the world.”
Anya is now 19 months and has undergone a number of treatments but has not responded to any of them so far.
Please help us share Anya’s dramatic story, in the hope of finding someone who could have more information about what could be causing her strange condition. It might help her to one day be able to live a normal life.
Here’s a report about Anya’s unusual condition (in Russian):
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