The Torture Of Putting Kyle To Sleep On Some Nights… (with audio!)

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December 5, 2012

Ok, so I’m writing this at 1:15am on Tues nite/Wed morning Dec 4-Dec5 cuz I can’t sleep.

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I had to work late tonight. I normally get home around 6:45pm. Tonight I got home at about 8:15pm.

Based on the texts my wife and I traded throughout the day I knew that they already had a long day.

When I got home, I found them in his playroom, in the dark, in his cozy nook watching a video on the iPad. It looked like he was well on his way to going to sleep.

Since I’m normally the one who puts Kyle to sleep (I am “The Sleep Whisperer”) and since the wife already had a full day, I took over as soon as I changed out of my “work clothes”.

I brought Kyle up to his bedroom, turned off the ipad and sat with him in the dark.

As I’ve previously written in my “All Hail Melatonin” post (read) the going to sleep routine changes on a daily basis. It’s been going relatively smoothly lately, however, partially due to an adjustment period from a new anti-seizure med that may make him drowsy.

Some nights lately, he’ll fall asleep on the couch and I’ll carry him up. Other nights lately on the floor in his playroom nook. Sometimes in his bed. Sometimes in our bed recently.

But, all in all, the getting to sleep routine has been great lately. He has had a few nights of waking up in the middle of the night and requiring more melatonin to get him back to sleep… but getting to sleep has been easy breezy.

Not tonight.

And I will readily admit before we get started… that I’m not proud of my lack of patience. In the grand scheme of things he was asleep by about 9:30pm, which is only about an hour later than usual. But listen to what that hour sounded like.

Here is what it sounded like at about 8:45pm, in the dark, in his bedroom. You can hear him laughing, flopping around, holding his breath, playing with his saliva, kicking me, trying to get out of bed, etc, etc.

(AUDIO ONLY)

Again, I’m not proud of my lack of patience…or the tone of my voice. My kid is laughing & giggling and I’m yelling….but sometimes my patience wears thin…especially when I’m being kicked. That’s just reality… This had been going on for just about 30 minutes at this point. And I’m starting to lose it. And I know he’s tired. And once he settles down he’ll go to sleep.

And on some nights like this, when the flopping around has gone on this long already, I’ll cut my losses and bring him back downstairs to the living room, make him some popcorn, give him more melatonin, and let him watch a bedtime show in the dark on the couch.

But I can hear the wife on the couch laughing at a sitcom, enjoying herself. So I decide to suck it up and stay upstairs…even though my patience is wearing thin.

At about 9pm, after another 15 minutes like you just heard, I say “let’s try going to the potty”

I take him in there, and he proceeds to pee like a racehorse! I’m like “Dude! Why didn’t you give me some sign that you had to go?!”

I’m thinking, “ok now maybe he’ll finally settle down”

As a change of atmosphere, I bring him to my bedroom, and he plops onto my bed. And he is a little calmer… but the next 20 minutes sound like this. I recorded this at about 9:20pm.

(AUDIO ONLY)

The breath holding in the calming minutes before he falls is asleep is INSANE sometimes! It’s like he has to almost pass out from breath holding in order to fall asleep. (We’ve been working on a breath holding protocol / behavior therapy for over a year now…but it’s a slow process, but that’s for another post).

By 9:30pm, he was asleep. By 9:35pm I was asleep. At about 1am, I heard him stirring next to me and realized that my snoring may be waking him up! So I carried him into his bed. Then I found the wife downstairs passed out on the couch (with the tv still going) and I came into my home office and started writing all this down.

That is all. The end. Just a little “slice of life” that shows how torturous the bedtime routine can be sometimes…but as I’m writing this and listening to how exasperated I sound on these videos, it makes me flash back to the pre-melatonin days and I remember the every night was pretty much like that.

And there was alot of yelling and exasperation and sleep deprivation for all three of us, pretty much every freaking night. So please don’t read this and think I’m complaining! I thank my lucky stars that this is a once in a while occurrence. And once again I bow down to the Melatonin Gods.

All Hail Melatonin!

It’s now 1:45am. Maybe I’ll take some melatonin.

Good night all!

🙂

Written by

Frank Campagna

I’m a 48 year old neurotypical dad with a 14 year old son with severe, non-verbal autism & epilepsy. I created this blog to rant about autism & epilepsy while celebrating my son who I affectionately call “the king” :-).

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