My glued up life

In our house, the struggles for sleep are very real.  And often I complain and bemoan the fact that we operate on little sleep, weird sleep and no sleep.  For a parent like me, it is a fact of life.  If your child wakes occasionally with a nightmare or leg cramp ~ multiply that by 100 and you will understand how it works.  We are not faced with screaming or crying.  We are faced with alert activity levels.  Where your child may be up for 20 minutes or an hour even, mine will be up for HOURS.  He will be hungry, active and not have a care in the world about the time.  He has no sense of time.

I share these issues not for solutions.  Because it is curious.  Because it is important for several reasons... first because the struggle is REAL and not just ours.  We just share it.  Because if you are an educator, there are other children out there who may have similar night issues and run on different level of energy in the day.  Because ADHD, autism and a range of issues have disturbing sleep patterns and to understand you need to just hear that the struggle is real.  I assure you... someplace out there is a mom as exhausted as I feel with similar nights and no one to GET IT!

SO..... Last night was off.  Could be because break was over and he was troubled by school.  Could be he had a ton of Cheetos and the artificial yumminess was bugging him.  Could be that he was overtired. Could just be for no other reason... just off.  He struggled to settle down and go to sleep but finally made it to sleep at 8:30pm.  At 10pm he was WIDE awake and chatting and bouncing off the walls.  At that moment I wondered what we had done that made him behave so "off".  At 11 he was up eating a sandwich with Doug (who does not handle it well).  Doug sat with Espen until midnight when he came to bed and said Espen was asleep.  At 1:30am the sound of a child in the room telling me that he was watching TV and if my feet were bugging me he knew what we could do to help. And he ran off.  WHAT THE WHAT.... so I drag myself out of the bed from the warm slumber I had just reached.  To discover an infomercial on and legos everywhere.  Espen was jittery.  He was wide awake.  He could not be still.  His eyes were huge.  Like he was on drugs... I honest asked Doug if we had given him melatonin or mistakenly his meds....

And yet he was so polite, happy and informed.  And proud.  He had gotten glue and built some lego shapes and "kragled them".  I was just coming into focus and it dawned on me to ask where he had found the glue because I keep it all put in a secret spot!  He was so excited to tell me he had gotten it from downstairs.

Now I was totally awake and in focus....  He had used his headlamp to sneak past where we were sleeping, down the stairs in the black of night to the creepy laundry room where he remembered I had taken his glue pen weeks ago and put on a ledge.  He retrieved the glue and creeped back up the stairs to the living room and got to creating his masterpieces.  He had the TV on and watched some information about a system to relax the feet.

I can't be mad at him for being who he is.  I fed him again and decided I better just stay in the bed with him.  So it took some pretty firm mom skills to get him to be still.  As you know, being still is the key to falling asleep!  It also got me an elbow to the face in the dark (my life is rife with opportunity to be injured).  At 3:30am he was softly snoring and I had felt his body finally relax and drift off to sleep.  I got out of his bed and managed a few hours of sleep before the alarm sounded for me to start my day and Doug left me to it... going off to work at 7!

Night wakening can be problematic.  We are in a rental and have just been hoping he stays inside the house.  He has not left or run for a long time ~ we are fortunate and get lazy.  The rental is hard to secure and we are here a short time.  However, he passes the front door before he ever gets to the kitchen.  It is secured with one door lock.  I may never hear him.  And so now I must worry and booby trap it at night so I can hear him if he should decide to leave.

Medication for sleep.... OF COURSE there is some.  We opt not to use it.  There is not a right or wrong answer here.  We can go for long periods of time with no wake ups ~ and since moving it is even better and we anticipate with the new house, the added insulation in his room will allow him a very peaceful and quiet slumber.  At some point in his life he will make choices about medication.  We can manage with little sleep because we feel we must help him figure out how to rest and manage himself when he is rousted with active imagination at night.  To function as he is in our society as it is, he will have to find coping skills.... and he will.  And amazingly this child can function quiet well with very little sleep.  He is today...

As for me.... well I am glad to be a stay at home mom who was able to hit the trail this morning and drink an extra cup of coffee.  My day is full and I have no time for rest beyond that.  Tonight we will all go to bed a little early and just pray the sleep demons are at bay....