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Autism Parenting: The End Of An Era

February 25, 2014 By

2012-09-24 23.02.15

Three nights ago, I made the excruciating decision to kick my children out of bed. My bed, that is.

To give a bit of background, my kids have always had full and free access to me, at any time of the day or night. When they have woken up in the middle of the night having had a bad dream, or feeling sick or lonely, they have been allowed to get into bed with me and snuggle up. It’s not always comfortable, being squished on both sides by children, but I have always loved it. Because what is better than hugs from your children?

As much as I love it, though, there are downsides. For one thing, my children take up an inordinate amount of space in the bed for such small people. It’s like they morph into starfish at night, and there are arms and legs everywhere, squashing my face and poking into my spine. For another thing, these little people are getting less little. George, who is ten, has reached the same height as my mother-in-law (OK, so she’s a little old lady, but still), and eight-year-old James is getting there as well.

What this means is that these nocturnal cuddles are costing me an enormous amount of sleep, and that makes it difficult for me to both function and be a human being that other people want to be around. In addition to that, George has started showing signs of puberty, and my husband and I have been feeling the need to carve out more time with each other.

We have reluctantly agreed that it is time for the kids to stay in their own beds at night.

James has accepted this with ease, but for George it is a massive change. Kids with autism do not appreciate it when the boat is rocked, and this particular change represents a tidal wave for him. It has been difficult for him, and by extension, difficult for us.

For the first two nights, James was the only person who got any sleep. My husband and I would lie helplessly in our bed, listening to George’s plaintive pleadings. He kept wandering into our room, and I kept taking him back to his own bed. I would get him settled, tuck him in and give him a kiss, and then go back to bed. And then I would do it again. And again, and again, and again.

While all of this was going on, George was whimpering, “I want Mommy. Lie down with Mommy in the bed.” And then, as he got sadder and sadder, he was simply calling my name.

I so badly wanted to cave. I so badly wanted to go to him, lie down with him and wrap my arms around him. But I knew that I couldn’t. In order to make this change, we would have to be persistent and patient, gentle and firm. We would have to just lie in bed and listen to our child being sad.

Sigh.

Last night – the third night – we caught a break. George went to sleep in his own bed, and he stayed there for the whole night. There was not so much as a whimper, not the slightest bit of movement. As much as I like to think that this represented an acceptance of the changes, I am realistic enough to know that the poor child was probably just too exhausted to protest. We may be in for another few nights of sleeplessness, and we will deal with it for as long as we need to.

As parents, it is our responsibility to guide our children towards independence, and this is an important step in that direction, even if, at the end of the day, it is harder for me than it is for them.

This is an original post by Kirsten Doyle. Photo credit to the author.

 

Filed Under: autism, Routines, sleep Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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Prince Of Dreams

April 24, 2013 By

One of my assignments for last term’s writing class was to write a poem about two characters interacting in a situation of conflict. I baulked at this more than a little. I love to write, and I like to think that I’m good at it – but I absolutely suck at poetry. I struggle to read it, and I struggle to write it. Four hours before the midnight deadline, I was trying to figure out what the hell to do with this assignment. At the same time, I was locked in a power struggle with George, who was just refusing to go to bed. Eventually – EVENTUALLY – he went to sleep, and I returned to my dilemma. As I sat there sipping a glass of Merlot, the poem I had been searching for came to me. This is what I wrote…

2012-09-09 23.16.49

Beautiful mind, gentle soul
The boy is different, yet strangely whole

He speaks with movement; he talks with his eyes
His spirit is pure; he tells no lies

He seems to be fragile, but has a strong will
Potential, desires and dreams he’ll fulfill

Tonight he won’t consent to be led
His mother cannot get him ready for bed

She coaxes, cajoles and softly convinces
He declines with a sigh, the most regal of princes

A thousands breaths later she lays down her child
By now he is sleepy, so tender and mild

She keeps watch by the bed and watches him sleep
The feeling of love so profound, so deep

(Photo credit: Kirsten Doyle)

Filed Under: Health Activist Writers Month Challenge, Poetry, sleep Tagged With: , , ,
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Bedtime Toys: Finding The Lost Lego

June 21, 2012 By

Last night, my son George couldn’t find his Lego. This was a potentially disastrous situation: George has to  have certain things with him when he goes to bed, including a subset of his Mr. Potato Head collection and his stack of pink and yellow Legos. Gathering them up and putting into bed is part of the routine, and if anything goes missing, the entire routine – and subsequently everyone’s sleep – goes to hell in a handbasket.

So when the Lego went missing, the entire family embarked on a thorough, systematic search. Anyone looking at us would have thought we were trying to root out Saddam Hussein. The search included all rooms in the house, the backyard, the car, even the garage.

Eventually James found half of the Lego stack caught behind the treadmill. The other half had somehow ended up in the washing machine with some laundry. The crisis was averted, and before long, George was snuggled up in bed with his Lego and his Mr. Potato Heads.

It seems like a strange choice of sleeping companions. I’d always thought that kids liked teddy bears because they were soft and comfortable to hug, and for a long time, I assumed that George’s total lack of interest in plush toys was somehow related to his autism. Since then, I have realized that not all kids are into teddy bears, and that preference has nothing to do with autism or the lack thereof.

James went through a brief phase of having to sleep with every stuffed toy in the house. I would have to arrange them around him, and to an extent, on top of him, and I would always wonder if the furry friends would take up so much space that there would be no room left for the kid. It was an impractical arrangement because James is a restless sleeper, and one by one, the stuffed animals would be displaced. When I went to wake James up in the morning, his room would look like a plush toy factory had exploded in it.

It was at around this time that George started taking his Mr. Potato Heads to bed. He couldn’t possibly fit his whole collection in there, so he would pick out about ten of them, ensure that they had their arms and legs and other bits and pieces, and he would line them up neatly. There was a whole variety of them – plain old Mr. Potato Heads were mixed in with the likes of Darth Tater and Indiana Jones: Taters of the Lost Ark.

Taters of the Lost Ark was an interesting one: if you pushed down on his hat the Indiana Jones theme song would be played. This would happen when George rolled over onto this particular Potato Head in his sleep.

It’s a little disorienting to wake up at three in the morning to the sounds of the Indiana Jones theme song.

George’s choice of sleeping companions has not changed much since then, but James’ has. The stuffed toys have been relegated to a toy box, and James now sleeps with Finn McMissile (of Disney Cars fame), his Megatron (a member of his ever-expanding Transformers family) and a glow-in-the-dark skeleton.

From time to time, I will check on them after bedtime to find the pair of them in George’s bed with their respective toys. They’re hiding under the comforter with a flashlight on, playing companionably alongside each other. I pretend to reprimand them for not sleeping, and then I slip out of the room and let them play. Because really, who am I to interrupt their moments of brotherly togetherness?

Do your kids sleep with stuffed animals, or do they prefer other toys? How strict are you about separating play time from sleep time?

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scazon/4207552952)

Filed Under: Bedtime, Children, sleep, Toys Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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January Goals: Laying The Foundation

January 9, 2012 By

launchpadSo, now that I have started 2012 off with a week of inspiration from guest bloggers, it is time for me to solidify my own goals for this year. In short, this year is going to be about me. That does not mean that I will ignore my children, refuse to cook dinner for my family, and let everyone go around in dirty clothes. It simply means that I will do a better job of taking care of myself.

Since becoming a mother, I have put the needs of my family first. Which is fine – the truth is that ultimately, everything I do is for my kids. The problem is that I have been taking care of everyone else at the expense of myself. This has led to me being overwhelmed, exhausted, and in many instances, frustrated and unhappy. In a way, I have allowed the essence of me to get lost, to be buried underneath all of the layers of responsibility that I have imposed upon myself.

And so, this year, I am going to find some balance. I am going to pursue some dreams that have been in the horizon of my mind for some time. I believe that being more balanced, less tired, and more in tune with myself will benefit everyone around me.

In 2012, I am aiming to make great strides in my running. With the help of my friend and coach Phaedra Kennedy, I am going to break 2:10:00 in my Run for Autism in October. I am going to make inroads in the world of writing. And come hell or high water, I am going to develop a positive relationship with food that allows me to build good nutritional habits. The old pattern of alternating binge eating with starving myself is going to come to an end. Sometimes I’m thin, sometimes I’m fat, sometimes I’m in between. I’m tired of the yo-yo, and it makes clothes shopping impossible.

My focus in January will be to lay the groundwork for success. This is my plan:

  • I will realign my sleeping habits to go to bed earlier, so I can wake up early in the mornings to run without feeling like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck. When I start my training program on January 30th, I will be used to getting up at five in the morning. My body will have already made that adjustment.
  • I will learn how to do the strength training exercises that Phaedra gave me, so I can incorporate them in my training program right off the bat.
  • I have ordered my Precision Nutrition kit (thanks, Phaedra, for the tip). When it arrives, I will not just dive into it like an overexcited puppy. I will take the time to look over it properly, learn how to use it, and plan appropriately.
  • I will contact a web designer about revamping my site to incorporate both my blog and a general writing component. That will make it easier for me to market myself as a freelance writer.
  • Since I already have a day job, I will start to use my commutes for writing. That’s exactly why Santa brought me this nifty little ’puter that I am writing this post on.

By the end of this month, I will have built myself a launch pad, and I will be able to spend the rest of the year in pursuit of my goals.

Hop on, it’s going to be a wild ride!

Filed Under: Dreams, Early Morning Running, family, goals, health, life, running, sleep, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Sleep Interrupted

July 18, 2011 By

Sleep – or lack thereof – has been a big issue in my life lately. I’ve never really been one to sleep for long stretches, and particularly since entering the world of motherhood, I consider six hours to be a good night’s sleep. But these days, even getting that amount of shut-eye is a challenge. There are a number of reasons for the recent sleep deficit, ranging from a run of kids’  tummy bugs to the fact that I’m an occasional insomniac.

Saturday night was particularly brutal. I went to bed early enough, because I was planning a long run early on Sunday morning. The kids were asleep, and James, who had been afflicted with a tummy bug, seemed to be on the mend.

At about midnight, when I had barely been asleep for half an hour, I woke to the sound of James crying his little heart out. My husband and I went to investigate, only to discover that the poor child had had a tummy-bug related accident. I whisked James off to the bathroom to clean him up and comfort him; my husband took care of changing the sheets and throwing soiled sheets and pajamas into the washing machine. James, bless his precious little soul, kept apologizing, even though I assured him that it was OK.

We got James settled and went back to bed. By the time I got back to sleep it was well after 1:00 a.m. A couple of hours later, I was roused to consciousness by a light tugging at my arm. I squinted in the darkness and saw James standing beside my bed. He took my hand, wordlessly led me to his bed, and plaintively asked me to stay with him. How could I refuse, right? So I climbed in and got settled, and James promptly threw up all over me.

As quietly as I could, I got James and myself cleaned up, threw yet another load of sheets and PJ’s into the washing machine, and having run of clean sheets, settled the two of us on the futon in our living room.

We went to sleep, and until about 4:00 a.m., I slept the sleep of the just.

At that point, George started to feel lonely, so he abandoned his bed and went in search of me. His first stop was my own bed, where he apparently found his Dad alone, and woke him up just to say, in a tone riddled with indignation, “You’re not Mommy.” Then he found me on the futon and squeezed in beside me.

There is not enough room on the futon for me and two long, lanky kids, both of whom sleep splayed out like starfish. But my discomfort was outweighed by the fact that I had my boys, one on either side of me. And so I (sleeplessly) passed the rest of the witching hours squished between my two gently snoring kids, with elbows and knees poking into my back, and my head bent at an uncomfortable angle.

Eventually, I gave up on the idea of sleep. I made coffee and drank some, and then, with my body screaming in protest, I went out for a 12km run.

It was not a good run, except in the sense that I actually finished it. By seven in the morning it was already scorching hot, I was not properly hydrated and above all, my body was utterly exhausted.

And because I love being there for my kids whenever they need me, at any time of the day or night, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doortoriver/2903845014/)

Filed Under: Children, Illness, life, parenting, running, sleep Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother (2010/04/23)

April 23, 2011 By

With the arrival of my Mom yesterday, I did not have the time or inclination to post. However, I do still want to keep up with the Post A Day challenge, so for the next two weeks, while I’m doing stuff like visiting with my Mom and getting married, you may see a number of reposts. Like this one… I thought it would be fun to unearth the post from this day in 2010…

My boys have fallen into a new sleep routine.  At bedtime, we do all the stuff we always did.  They get their jammies on, use the bathroom, brush their teeth (most days they have a bath earlier in the evening).  For story-time, I sit on my glider chair between their beds – the same glider chair that saw me through countless night-time feedings when my boys were infants.  George gets right into bed, James curls up on my lap, and they each drink their milk while I read a story (current flavour of the day: anything to do with Thomas the Train).  After the story, James gets into his bed, each of them gets a sip more milk, and the lights go out.

About five minutes later, we usually see a little face quietly peeking around the corner: George, trying to sneak onto the futon we have in our living room so he can watch TV.  Or maybe he just wants the extra hugs we always give him, because once we’ve hugged him he goes back to bed amenably enough.  At some point during the night, usually fairly early on, he migrates to the sofabed in the playroom, and sleeps there for the rest of the night.

Sometimes I worry about this.  From time to time, when one of the kids is having a hard time, I have to sleep on the sofabed with said kid, and that thing ruins my back.  I always wake up the next morning feeling as if I’ve been tortured by Vikings.  I worry about whether the sofabed is doing to George’s back what it’s doing to mine.  But once he’s there he won’t budge, he sleeps soundly, and he wakes up cheerfully enough.  So maybe he’s OK and I just need to chill out a little instead of finding yet another thing to be perpetually stressed about.

In the meantime, James is sleeping soundly in his own bed.  He’s a little champion at bedtime, James is.  Once the lights are out he goes right to sleep without a fuss.  He usually wakes up in the middle of the night, though – sometime between midnight and three in the morning.  When I found out the reason for his nocturnal awakenings, my heart soared: he gets lonely for his big brother.  He makes his way to the sofabed, climbs in beside George, and goes right back to sleep.  George surfaces just enough to shift to make room for James, then he goes to sleep as well.

I am always the first one in the household to wake up in the mornings.  Some days – like today – I go for an early morning run.  Other days, I like to get dressed, pour out a cup of coffee, and have some me-time at the computer reading emails or playing meaningless games on Facebook.  I love carving out that time for myself in the mornings, before the rest of the world wakes up.

Whatever I am doing – running or playing on the computer – the first thing I always do is check on my boys.  I go to the playroom and watch them sleeping peacefully, each completely at ease with the other’s presence.  They look cosy and comfortable, like a pair of sleepy kittens.  There is always physical contact between the two: James’ hand resting on George’s, or George’s hand lightly touching James’ shoulder.  When I checked on them this morning, George’s arm was flung over James’ shoulders.  It looked big brotherly and protective.

I savour those moments as I watch them and wonder what dreams are going on in those little heads.  Even though they are sleeping, I feel as if I am witnessing a moment of special connection between the two brothers.

Filed Under: Brothers, Children, Siblings, sleep Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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Rough As A Badger’s Arse

April 18, 2011 By

To say that I am feeling rough today would be an understatement. I have that exhausted, fuzzy-in-the-brain, all-over achy feeling that is usually associated with the aftermath of a weekend of heavy drinking and dedicated partying.

I guess this is partly true. On Saturday our bridal party threw a Jack & Jill party for us. One of the groomsmen showed up with several bottles of wine and a beer-filled cooler that could have sunk a small ship. “Drink!” he commanded. “Enjoy!”

Well, orders are orders. I drank. I enjoyed. The guys crowded around the cooler of beer like bees around a honeypot, while me and most of the other women present tucked into the wine.

It was an outstanding evening. There was food, there were happy people, there was a lovely raffle prize (which was won by my five-year-old), and there was the incredible spectacle of my soon-to-be mother-in-law enthusiastically throwing a pie into the face of her firstborn son, the groom-to-be.

Eventually the guests left, leaving Gerard and I to settle our over-excited children. By the time we fell into an exhausted sleep ourselves, it must have been close to two in the morning.

I woke up yesterday morning with a well-earned hangover – the kind that comes complete with a queasy stomach, an excruciating headache and a death wish. I stumbled into the bathroom to get some extra-strength Tylenol and some water. Then I somehow – probably by luck more than anything else -found my way back to bed, and with the room spinning around me, I went back to sleep.

For a change, the kids were not up at the crack of dawn, as they usually are on weekends. They let me sleep, the little treasures.

When I woke up for the second time, I still felt kind of gross, but at least I felt as if I was going to live. I got up and went for a run (I say that as if it was a seamless event – the process of getting up and going for a run actually took about three hours).

The run was hard. The weather was bad. I was exhausted at the end of it – as if I hadn’t already been exhausted to begin with.

You’d think I would have slept last night, but no. Not only is George going through one of his phases of not sleeping, my mind is chock-full of details right now and just isn’t letting me rest. I tossed and turned and eventually fell into a fitful sleep, not long before I had to wake up.

To borrow a wonderful phrase from a book I read (This Charming Man by Marian Keyes, if you’re interested), today I am feeling as rough as a badger’s arse.

After another seventeen or so cups of coffee, I might start to feel normal.

Filed Under: Fun, hangover, party, running, sleep Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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Things That Go Bump In The Night

January 6, 2011 By

When our kids were young, all of the experts, books, websites and other parents advised us to establish a consistent bedtime routine.  It took a little bit of time a couple of months four and a half years for us to come up with a routine that works for everyone, and usually bedtimes in my household are fairly uneventful.

Most days the kids will take a bath (I am one of those bad, bad Moms who does not bathe her kids every single day).  On the other days, they take turns in the bathroom to pee, brush their teeth, and wash their hands, faces, and any other parts of them with obvious dirt smears.  They get milk, each boy gets to pick one book for the bedtime stories, and then they are allowed to snuggle on the couch with their Dad for a few minutes.

By the time those few minutes are up, James is very often asleep.  I carry him to his bed – a task that is getting more and more difficult as he gets more and more long and lanky – and if he is still awake I lie down with him for a few minutes and tell him a story about a magic horse I invented that takes James to all kinds of wonderful places.

While this is going on, Gerard is tucking George into his own bed, and when I am done with James, I go in to spend a few minutes with George. He always wants me to stay for longer than I do, but I am always mindful of all of the nightly tasks still waiting to be done. I hug George and give him a few minutes to engage in one of his favourite activities: playing with my abundance of hair. We always have the following dialogue, without fail, every single night (bear in mind as you read this that any dialogue for this mostly non-verbal child is a miracle):

Me: George, who does Mommy love?
George: You love George.
Me: Who does George love?
George: He loves Mommy.
Me: Are you tired?
George: Yes.
Me: Are you ready to go to sleep?
George: Yes.
Me: Goodnight, George.
George: Goodnight, Mommy.

And with that, I give him a kiss, slip out of his room and let him drift off to sleep.  He usually migrates to our bed in the early hours of the morning, and we let him.  One day he’ll grow out of that and we’ll miss these days, so we enjoy it while we can.

Last night, the routine went smoothly enough.  I had my miracle dialogue with George, left his room, and started making sure the boys’ backpacks had what they needed for their respective school days.  All of a sudden, I heard the following from the direction of George’s room:
*Thump* (George flopping himself out of bed and onto the floor)
*Scream* (frustration)
*WHUMP WHUMP* (George banging his head on the wall. Hard enough to dent the drywall)

Oh dear.

I returned to George and calmly made him get back into bed.  As I was trying to settle him, James suddenly appeared by my side crying about how he didn’t feel like being alone.  This was a tricky situation to be in.  Usually, when both boys need me, I simply lie down between them and comfort them at the same time.  But when George is in a state where he is hitting his head off the wall, I need to keep James away from him, otherwise James becomes the target for headbanging.

This was one of those times when I had to send James back to bed crying so I could make sure George was safe.  I always feel truly horrible when I have to do that.  I feel so bad for James.  But sometimes there just isn’t any other choice. It is part of the life and times of special needs parenting.

I got George calmed down – or so I thought – and went in to see James.  I hugged him and comforted him, and told him I loved him.  Sometimes, I said, I have to make sure your brother isn’t getting hurt.  Sometimes I have to make you wait, and that makes you sad, and I am really, really sorry.  But I love you so much and I’ll always take care of you, and I think you are a wonderful boy.

James was content.  He sighed softly and went to sleep.  Just as I was leaving his room, I heard the *thump scream whump whump* from George’s room again.

What, are they trying to tag-team here?  When one stops the other starts?  Can they sense my stress and exhaustion?  Is this that thing that animals do, where they go after the weakest member of the herd?

I am afraid to say that my patience ran out.  I did not go in to George.  I did not hug him or talk to him or try to settle him.  From where I was, I called out angrily, “Get back into bed!  That’s enough!”

There were a couple more screams and one more head-meets-wall incident.  After that, things got quiet and both boys slept through the night in their own beds.  I wasn’t woken at four in the morning by George climbing into bed beside me and wrapping his arms around my neck.  A bittersweet feeling, that.

The logical, rational part of me feels that I did the right thing by not rewarding the second incident of headbanging.

But the Mom in me – the one with a heart full of love for her kids – feels horrible that the last thing my sweet George heard before going to sleep was the sound of my angry voice.

Sometimes, no matter what we do, we feel that we just cannot get it quite right.

Photo credit:  Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

Filed Under: autism, Children, family, parenting, postaday2011, Siblings, sleep Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

April 23, 2010 By

My boys have fallen into a new sleep routine.  At bedtime, we do all the stuff we always did.  They get their jammies on, use the bathroom, brush their teeth (most days they have a bath earlier in the evening).  For story-time, I sit on my glider chair between their beds – the same glider chair that saw me through countless night-time feedings when my boys were infants.  George gets right into bed, James curls up on my lap, and they each drink their milk while I read a story (current flavour of the day: anything to do with Thomas the Train).  After the story, James gets into his bed, each of them gets sip more milk, and the lights go out.

About five minutes later, we usually see a little face quietly peeking around the corner: George, trying to sneak onto the futon we have in our living room so he can watch TV.  Or maybe he just wants the extra hugs we always give him, because once we’ve hugged him he goes back to bed amenably enough.  At some point during the night, usually fairly early on, he migrates to the sofabed in the playroom, and sleeps there for the rest of the night.

Sometimes I worry about this.  From time to time, when one of the kids is having a hard time, I have to sleep on the sofabed with said kid, and that thing ruins my back.  I always wake up the next morning feeling as if I’ve been tortured by Vikings.  I worry about whether the sofabed is doing to George’s back what it’s doing to mine.  But once he’s there he won’t budge, he sleeps soundly, and he wakes up cheerfully enough.  So maybe he’s OK and I just need to chill out a little instead of finding yet another thing to be perpetually stressed about.

In the meantime, James is sleeping soundly in his own bed.  He’s a little champion at bedtime, James is.  Once the lights are out he goes right to sleep without a fuss.  He usually wakes up in the middle of the night, though – sometime between midnight and three in the morning.  When I found out the reason for his nocturnal awakenings, my heart soared: he gets lonely for his big brother.  He makes his way to the sofabed, climbs in beside George, and goes right back to sleep.  George surfaces just enough to shift to make room for James, then he goes to sleep as well.

I am always the first one in the household to wake up in the mornings.  Some days – like today – I go for an early morning run.  Other days, I like to get dressed, pour out a cup of coffee, and have some me-time at the computer reading emails or playing meaningless games on Facebook.  I love carving out that time for myself in the mornings, before the rest of the world wakes up.

Whatever I am doing – running or playing on the computer – the first thing I always do is check on my boys.  I go to the playroom and watch them sleeping peacefully, each completely at ease with the other’s presence.  They look cosy and comfortable, like a pair of sleepy kittens.  There is always physical contact between the two: James’ hand resting on George’s, or George’s hand lightly touching James’ shoulder.  When I checked on them this morning, George’s arm was flung over James’ shoulders.  It looked big brotherly and protective.

I savour those moments as I watch them and wonder what dreams are going on in those little heads.  Even though they are sleeping, I feel as if I am witnessing a moment of special connection between the two brothers.

Filed Under: family, Siblings, sleep Tagged With: , , , ,
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To sleep, perchance to dream

April 16, 2010 By

On Monday night, George had one of his stay-awake-for-half-the-night nights. It happens once every two weeks or so.  He goes to sleep easily enough, aided by the melatonin we give him with his bedtime milk, but then he wakes up in the early hours of the morning – anywhere from midnight to 3:00 a.m. – and he stays awake for about three hours.  He is not upset, he does not cry.  Apart from occasional bursts of laughter (which, to be honest, are a bit creepy at four in the morning when nothing is funny), he is actually very quiet.  He is not still, though.  He gets up and wanders around, or he climbs into bed beside me and starts playing with my hair, or he sits on the end of my bed rocking back and forth.  It is a level of activity that leaves me in an uncomfortable state of consciousness: he is not active enough to force me to just get up and do something useful, and he is not still enough for me to be able to drift back to sleep.  So I lie there in bed in a state of exhaustion, trying to settle him and get him to go back to sleep.  Experience has taught me that I cannot really force this.  When he has these nights, the best thing for me to do is just lie as still as I can, ignore George as much as possible, and wait for him to go back to sleep.

As long as he sticks to his regular schedule – about once every two weeks – I can handle it.  I always feel like the undead the following day, but at least I know that I’ll be getting relatively normal sleep for the next two weeks.  This is just part of his autism that I’ve kind of learned to live with.  Autism and sleep disorders frequently go together, and I reckon that once every two weeks isn’t too bad considering what some parents have to go through.

This time he did not stick to the schedule.  Instead of waiting for two weeks, we were treated to another one of those nights after a mere two days.  On Wednesday afternoon Catherine came.  Catherine is the new respite worker, and this was the first time she was working with George.  For a first encounter, they did OK with each other, but George was definitely stressed out by this change to his day.  After Catherine left, he was prowling around with a mood that could have gone either way at a moment’s notice.  At bedtime he was narky, unsettled, and uncooperative.  We were patient: knowing that changes in his daily routine do tend to reflect on his sleeping patterns, we had kind of expected this.  George eventually settled down in my bed and went to sleep.

At about 1:00 a.m. he woke up in a mood.  He was crying, he was angry, and he was noisily rooting around in his box of alphabetic fridge magnets announcing to the world that he wanted “small letter a”.  Much to his chagrin, we removed his access to the box of fridge magnets, and with some soothing, he settled down with his dad.  To give him more space, I abandoned my spot on the bed and went to sleep on the sofa-bed.  Predictably, George followed.  When he wakes up in the middle of the night, he goes into full-on “Mommy mode”.

For three hours, he was playing with my hair, sitting up on the bed, lying down again, demanding that I scratch his back, telling me he wanted popcorn, getting up to wander around and look for his box.  I was mostly ignoring him, occasionally telling him to lie down, moving his hand away from my hair (the way he constantly plays with my hair sometimes drives me crazy, especially in the middle of the night).  I was watching the clock, and at about 3:30 a.m. I ruefully accepted that I would not be going for my planned early morning run.

George eventually fell asleep at about 4:00, and I fell asleep shortly thereafter.  I woke up just over two hours later, almost weeping with exhaustion.  Somehow I got through the day, helped no doubt by the knowledge that I would be leaving early due to a medical appointment. Throughout the day I was filled with anxiety: Catherine was coming again.  Were we in for another tumultuous night?

George and catherine had a successful session.  When Catherine left George gave her a hug; he was happy and smiling for the rest of the day.  He was contentedly playing with his box of magnets, which had been restored to him.  Although I felt pitifully tired, I went for a run (it was a good one too – I well and truly flounced my target pace).  At bedtime, George was relaxed and cooperative, and he went to sleep right away.  There was a brief moment of anxiety in the middle of the night when we heard him digging through his box.  Once more, I removed the box – this time, George went back to sleep immediately, and I spent the rest of the night in glorious oblivion.

Having had two virtually sleepless nights over the course of three days, I still feel exhausted.  Sometimes a single good night of sleep is not sufficient to wipe out the sleep deficit.  I am looking forward to another night of good slumber and a restful weekend.

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