Sleep little one

As some of you may know, many people with Autism do not sleep... literally. They may sleep two to four hours a night and that is it. To this point, we have been so fortunate in this department. We always thought it was an advantage of Cole's high activity level; at least he tired himself out and slept decent. I've heard horror stories at support groups from parents who literally take shifts during the night to care for their Autistic child who rarely sleeps. One will sleep from 9-2 and the other from 2-7. I have always prayed this will never happen to us. Cole takes so much of our energy each day and to add sleep deprivation to that would be nearly impossible.

Like I said, Cole has been a good sleeper. He plays so hard each day and for the most part he crashes at night. That was until last spring when daylight savings time hit. This is a tough adjustment for most of us. It's lighter out later and frankly, the weather is too nice to want to go inside and get ready for bed. Pat and I spent the majority of the spring and summer nights trying every trick in the book just to get Cole to stay in his bed. I'll spare you the details, but it was a nightmare. From 8pm to sometimes 11pm, we took turns every five minutes putting him back in his room, reading books, changing movies, letting him sleep in his jeans, socks and t-shirts... you name it and we tried it. It was thoroughly exhausting and it was nearly impossible to get anything done or have some peace and quiet. I always felt especially bad for Pat, who leaves for work very early in the morning and most often wanted to go to bed before Cole would even stay in his bedroom. Our patience was wearing very thin.

About a month ago, we tried giving Cole Melatonin. It has been a life-saver in terms of getting Cole to sleep. Melatonin is a natural sleep aid. We crush it up, put it in his Oreo cookie and thirty minutes later he is out. What a blessing!!  We thought it was too good to be true. At first it worked great but in the past few weeks, Cole has been getting up really early. And I mean REALLY early. 

Many nights he come to our door, knocks on it and says, "BOO!!".  It's cute, but not at 2:13am. And not after you've done it four times already that night. For some reason, Cole isn't staying asleep for long. He is getting up, thinking it's morning. It doesn't matter what we tell him or how we explain things to him, when he is up, he's up. Sure there are nights when we can walk him back into his room and he'll fall right back to sleep. Last night was not one of those nights. Last night it was 3:03am. I knew it right when I saw him that he was up for the day. Cole was bright eyed, he got himself a cold drink of water and started talking about his new ceiling fan. Between the hours of three and six thirty am, Pat and I must have walked him back into his room at least 10 times. We both laid with him, trying desperately to get him to relax. Nothing worked. Pat got up at his usual 5am and headed off to work. Cole was still awake. Finally around 6:30, he fell asleep. Bummer for Cole, I had to wake him at 7:15 to get ready for speech. Cole was very tired, but he hopped up and got ready to go. I crawled back into bed and managed to get another 40 minutes of sleep until Connor woke me up. After some snuggles, I got up, took Tylenol to rid my sleep-deprivation headache and started my day. Pat, in the meantime, had eight+ hours of work ahead of him. All of this aside, I am so thankful to have been given this day. Despite being tired, I made the most of it. It was a gift.

But..... if you feel like sending some good sleeping vibes our way, we will gladly take them.  :-)