Summary from Game 1 - Daylight Savings Sleep Battle 2012

After yesterday's post, I'm sure you are all sitting on pins and needles to find out who won Night 1 of the epic battle of Sleep vs. Autism and Daylight Savings (or are too battle weary yourself to care, but just trying to find something to read to keep you awake until your coffee kicks in).

Here are the highlights (or more appropriately, lowlights) and stats from this household.

Key moments:
11:30 pm - Parent #1 went to bed, confidently planning 3 hours of sleep before game begins.
12:30 am (pre-daylight savings time change) - Child #1 jumped in Parents' bed to start game early
12:31 am - Child #1 launches aggressive offense by kicking, twisting, turning, flipping, bolting upright and pinning own appendages under Parent #1's torso and legs.

2:30 am (post daylight savings time change) - Parent #2 shows up to play game. Sees Child #1 sprawled out across entire bed. Forfeits game. Rouses Parent #1 from state of half sleep up to inform her of said forfeit.
2:31 am - Parent #2 immediately retreats to Child #1's empty bed in dark, quiet room, prompting silent cursing from Parent #1.
2:31 - 5 am - Child #1 continues assault. Parent #1 remains on defensive.
5 am - Child #2 makes early appearance in order to participate in game.
5:30 am - Parent #1 forfeits game and sends Children downstairs to play video games.

Records broken during game:

• Child #1 beat own personal records in both "duration of time awake" at 4 hours and "average time stayed asleep" at approximately 9 minutes (Parent #1's time keeping possibly skewed by delirium).
• Parent #1 beat own personal record in "amount of time laying 1/2 off bed" (most of night) and # of times switching side of bed in attempt to free self from Child #1's appendages (4 times)

Additional Stats:

• # of times Parent #1 silently cursed Autism and Daylight Savings - 597
• # of times Parent #1 kicked - 1,268 (approximately)
• # of personal injuries sustained by Parent #1 - 6
• # of those injuries to eye sockets and nose - 4
• # of hours Children have been playing video games - 4
• Amount Parent #1 cares about time spent on video games - 0

Final score:
Autism and Daylight Savings - 1,871
Parent #1 - 0

Parent #1 loses the first match in the 2012 Epic Battle against Autism and Daylight Savings in a pathetic shutout. With at least half a dozen more nights to play, Parent #1 will be training by taking a nap this afternoon and coaching Parent #2 on how best to enter the game as a sub.

What are the stats from your own battle last night?

Whose Bed is it Anyway?

Tonight we get to turn the clocks back an hour and mark the end of Daylight Savings.

When I was in college, it meant a bonus hour at The Jug. When I first started working, it meant an extra hour lounging around, NOT in a cubicle.

But now? Now it just means I'm going to get kicked for another hour.

I wrote about James' sleep issues last year (with a surprisingly positive attitude) in Setting Clocks and Expectations . Maybe I'm already heading into this annual event more sleep deprived than last time, but I'm definitely feeling less optimistic about our progress this year.

Or maybe it's because what I view as an ongoing family challenge to be addressed, my boys have decided it is our everyday routine, as is entirely obvious from the interactions we had this past week:

The other morning I told Johnny that I left his school uniform on my bed for him. He answered "Which bed? The one in your room or the one you actually sleep in every night?"

And then, later that day, James was upstairs with his Dad. I have no idea what actually happened, but I imagine it went like this:

James said his usual: "I like your bed much better than mine. It is more comfortable".  

Tony matter-of-factly answered: "Our bed isn't really big enough for 3 people and maybe you should think about sleeping in your own bed."  

James asked: "Is there a bigger bed?" 

Tony (who apparently is absolutely, completely unable to lie) said: "Yes, this is a Queen sized bed. They make a bigger bed called a King".

That is what must have happened, because James came immediately running downstairs yelling "MOM! They make a bigger bed! Its a KING! Can you hook it up on the iPad Mom? Hook up the top 10 list of biggest beds? Wow! Look at this! There is an ULTRA KING! We can get a Ultra King sized bed and then you don't have to get in the way of my legs when I want to kick anymore! Yay! Let's get an ULTRA KING!"

And with that, I sighed and was just about to give Tony "the look", but I realized it wasn't even worth it when I recalled our Facebook exchange earlier in this week

Kristin McCarthy Macchi Hurricane James up at 3. Woke his bro at 5. Now obsessing about #Sandy & all storms that ever happened. It's gonna be a LONG day. #autism

Tony Macchi Well that explains why you looked so tired this morning.

 

*Sigh* Just bring on the extra hour already. I'll spend it debating whether I should cave and buy the Ultra King sized bed, or just move back onto the dog bed on the floor of the boys' room.

 

Setting Clocks and Expectations

Instead of snoozing through the extra hour we got this morning, I spent it cursing my son's internal clock.

As he lay there kicking me, sighing, flopping back and forth and bolting upright every 30 seconds to look at the clock, I started thinking about how sleep had become such a huge issue for our family.  Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever need therapists to help me get my child to sleep.

James has NEVER been a sleeper. As a baby, he couldn't sleep laying down flat. He spent most of his first year sleeping on my chest, while I stared at the clock. We managed to get him in his crib some nights by placing him in his car seat in his crib. He would sleep for an hour, tops, then be wide awake and we'd start all over again.

The baby swing was torture to him. We kept trying, thinking he would get used to it. The screams got worse each time I put him in it, so it went into the attic until Johnny was born.

He stopped napping completely when he turned 1 year old, so those six hours he got at night was the only sleep he got. I averaged about four.

I turned to the Ferber method when I was pregnant with Johnny and in desperate need of sleep. All that taught me was that James could scream for hours and not be any more tired than when he started. For both James and me, the Ferber Method was a form of emotional abuse.

As he got older, nights became harder. We had to lay with him until he fell asleep. Night after night, Tony would lay there, getting kicked and listening to James intentionally hold his breath. We tried Melatonin because many children on the spectrum don't create enough of the hormone to regulate their sleep cycle. It helped him get to sleep faster, but he was still up at 2 am. Sometimes for the rest of the night.

We started wondering if many of his behaviors might actually be the result of sleep deprivation, not autism.

When Johnny was out of his crib, we put the two boys in a room together, and it gave James enough support that he was able to go to sleep on his own. We stopped the Melatonin when he had a scary episode of hallucinating, and we hoped for the best.

Five pillows, a body pillow, his weighted blanket and 3 other heavy blankets on top of him and an entire zoo of stuffed animals helped to provide the sensory feedback he needed to relax enough to fall asleep.

Tony and I started to get our evenings back together, but the middle of the night wakings continued. Soon his move into our bed took 3 different trips to bring all his gear. Our bed started looking like this in the morning:


Tony is actually in there!

Putting him back in his bed didn't work for us (mostly it just didn't work for me). He was awake for hours at a time, his mind racing.  He often woke Johnny up, and then I'd end playing musical beds, some nights 4 beds in 3 different rooms. I usually wound up sleeping on their floor trying to get both of them back to sleep, on 2 dog beds I put together to create a toddler sized mattress. We don't even have a dog. I actually bought dog beds specifically for me (yeah, I can't believe I just admitted that publicly...)




yeah. That's my bed. The one on the floor.

 It was insanity (click this link to see how ridiculous it was), but I had been living it so long that I started to think it was life as usual.

His social/ miracle worker helped us create a sleep training program and since last June, James is able to stay in his own bed most nights until 6 am.

I finally got some sleep, and actually started feeling like myself again.

So, it was really easy for me to lay in bed and bitch on Facebook about my kid not getting the whole Daylight Savings thing. But when I started to think about everything we've been through as a family, I realized that the hour I got kicked this morning was actually a welcome reminder of how far James has come.

I know it is going to take some time for his internal clock to re-adjust, but if I can remember that I actually don't have to sleep on a dog bed anymore, I think I can get through this Daylight savings thing.

Didn't get to sleep last night 'till the morning came around

It's a game we play most nights, so often it has become kind of a ritual in our house.  It is played like this:
10:30 pm - Mom goes to bed exhausted.
11:30 pm - Dad goes to bed. Mom is asleep.
1 am - Boy wakes up. Boy grabs all the pillows, pillow pets and animals he can fit in his arms and thunders down the hall into Mom and Dad's bed. Boy steps on Mom's stomach to get in between parents.
1 - 2 am - Boy kicks, squirms, tosses and turns, clicks teeth, re-arranges pillows.
2 am - Boy realizes he forgot one of his animals.  Boy panics. Dad snores.  Mom gets animal.
2 - 3:30 am - Boys squirms more. Boy elbows Mom in eye socket.
3:30 am - Boy yells for water. Dad snores again.  Mom gets water.
3:30 am - Brother hears noise. Brother gets Mom. Mom goes into brother's bed so he won't be alone.
3:30 - 4:30 - Mom lays awake in Brother's bed and stares at clock.
4:30 - Mom falls asleep.
4:45- Boy comes to find Mom. Mom follows him back into her own bed.
5:30 am - Boy and Mom fall asleep.
6 am -  Boy wakes up, wakes Mom up. Boy goes downstairs to play Wii.
6 - 6:30 am -  Mom sleeps.
6:30 am - alarm goes off.  Mom sighs.  Dad asks Mom how she slept.  Mom sighs again and goes downstairs to prepare for next game.