If she doesn't start sleeping through the night....

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Hi all.

Daughter is 28 months diagnosed HFA.

The past two months have produced a markedly increased frequency in sleep disturbances-right along with her responding to therapy strangely enough?

Perhaps I am only noticing it more because she now is out of the crib-has her own bed now and transferred to that with ease. She comes to our room to get help going back to sleep. Poor thing crawls into bed with me and lays belly down to have her back patted as if she cannot go back to sleep. She is doing this every hour to 1/1/2 hours throughout the night-stopping at about 3:30am.. she seems to sleep after that. She is completely non-verbal- but we have this " connection" lately. I can tell she sooo wants to get some sleep. Its as if she cant? I remember going through that up until my 20's...

Anyways... I am suffering as a result! My eyes are red, I'm exhausted and my performance at work is suffering. This morning I actually got scared when I couldn't concentrate driving to work in the rain. I don't think I could have responded to an interruption in the traffic cycle. I knew then something has to give...

So here I am asking for advice. I have noticed that exercise ( walks) seem to help get some energy out and she sleeps better but It rained last night and that was not an option. Thankfully we live in Florida and are not snowed in to prevent walks.

Bedtime's are ritualistic, its walk, dinner, bath, brush teeth, then bedtime. We always aim for 8:30pm. She has no siblings or pets, no lights are left on in her room nor any outside interfering light ( we live in a rural area)

Has anyone here tried melatonin? Any thoughts or suggestions? Help!

Thanks,

I went through this years ago with my daughter. Ended up just like you and at the end of my rope. I developed illnesses and all sorts of problems due to lack of sleep. I never found any way to turn her toward sleeping all night. But at some point I shifted her dinner later in the evening so her belly was more satisfied, and that helped. Also, I got her to be more physically active in the afternoons to tire her active little body out, but not too much.
I stopped working outside the home and I know that's not an option for everyone. It took a long time for her to figure out that sleeping feels good, if that makes sense. Also, I abandoned the idea of making her sleep in her own bed and read about family bed and implemented that. Kids change everything, so I went with what worked so I could survive.
I would look into asking a pediatrician about melatonin for little ones.
That is extremely difficult and I wish I could help more.

I think this isn't just autism: it's not uncommon in NT kids at her age, either. Google "Toddler Wakefulness" and you get over a million results. I remember struggling with DS around that age, too - and he didn't sleep well for quite some time (he'd been sleeping through the night and then suddenly stopped. We had a fold-out couch in his room and would trade off going in there, folding out the couch, and sleeping in his room, sometimes with one hand on him. I don't recall the every-few-hours, but he'd be up once or twice in a night and we suffered from sleep deprivation, too.)

First of all, is she teething? (That's the typical NT reason, pain.) You can check with your doctor to find safe ways to address the symptoms. Second, is she napping? You might try tweaking the nap schedule a bit, try a week with it earlier, and another with it a bit later and see if that makes a difference. Third, you might check and see if there are sensory issues you can change: temperature changes, uncomfortable clothes, a weighted blanket or a lighter blanket, a white-noise machine, a crinkly fidget.

The other thing is to see if you can get some respite care, and have a caregiver (family member?) stay with you a few nights or mornings on the weekends so you can "catch up" a little on sleep.

In our case, it resolved itself eventually - DS is 12 now, and struggles to get to sleep but is often pretty independent about it. We have had some night terrors, but they usually happen consistently two hours after he goes to bed (so we are still up.) The extreme waking gradually got better until it was tolerable.

Good luck!

I used to just crawl into bed with my kids during those phases. They can't help what they can't help, they will eventually phase shift out of it, and you need your sleep. So, whatever works.

Some families here have done melatonin with some success. Go to the lowest dosage you can buy and then break that aprt to get to 1 mg.

Have you thought of making or buying her a weighted blanket? Since using ours my 5yo daughter has stopped thrashing about and bruising her legs, shouting out, messing about for an hour before falling asleep etc. It really soothes her and helps her stay still. Before that she would worry about how she couldnt get to sleep which made it worse.

My oldest, didn't sleep through the night until he was something like 18-20 months old, but for the most of that time period, after 6-8 months or so, he would wake once in the early morning ravenous, eat, go back to sleep. We called it sleeping through the night when he managed to make it to 5 AM on a regular basis before needing to be fed. But he has never been one for snuggling, crawling into bed with me, or multiple wakings. And he's always been very good about going to bed when told. He's the extremely compliant type of child.

My middle child who is not on the ASD spectrum, but is very ADHD, is the one I had trouble with on sleeping through the night. He has always demanded to be held, snuggled, cuddled, and to sleep in my bed. He has always been difficult to get into bed to sleep in the first place. It took until he was almost six to get him to stop sneaking into my bed at night. Anything I can say about how we dealt with it doesn't really apply, because he was always very verbal. Just saying that non-ASD children can be very clingy and needy about bedtime and want to be in mom's bed, too.

We've used melatonin for years with him, and my best friend has used it on her son for years also. It comes in chewable pills, melt under the tongue pills, liquids, and tablets (the ones in the general stores are NOT something I would try to give to child. They taste TERRIBLE.) The easiest we have found for dealing with small children is the liquid. It is easier to adjust the dose, it tastes good, and it works faster than the chewables. Melatonin doesn't actually knock them out. It makes them more sleepy. They can fight it, if they really want to, and they can get used to the level of sleepy it is giving them. I try not to do it every night, because they end up requiring more of it to get the same result.

Melatonin is naturally occurring in the body and builds up the longer the body is out of bright lights. Keeping bright fluorescent lights off in the evenings can help it build up naturally.

Just as a note, it is very safe. My friend's son climbed into the medicine cabinet one night after we put them to bed during a family sleepover, grabbed the melatonin and a bag of marshmallows and scooted back to their room. He then stuffed marshmallows full of melatonin and fed them to my middle child, who was three at the time. Her son was four. They kept giggling, so we went to check on them, and found an empty bottle of melatonin. A call to Poison Hotline (my friend literally had them on speed dial for dealing with her son) resulted in, "Well he's going to be sleepy for a long while, but it won't hurt him." He was sleepy for about fifteen hours, and then he was fine. I know, I know, parents of the year, but still pretty safe medication.

Thanks to melatonin and a weighted blanket we've managed to cut down the 3 or 4 times a night to lately once maximum. At almost 3 he is finally sleeping through the night. We've only had 2 night wake ups this week so it's getting to be pretty consistent. Weighted blankets are expensive but I was able to sew one myself for about 40.00 for material. He loves it.

I would just note that some people are EXTREMELY sensitive to melatonin. We tried it with my son at a 1 mg sublingual dose. It got him to sleep for sure but seemed to leave him quite irritable the next day, which I found out afterward is a common side-effect. Not sure what's worse, lack of sleep or dealing with an extra grumpy autistic 5 yo. Also it did not seem to help him STAY asleep. He still woke in the middle of the night and crawled into our bed. I have given up on that front. I put him down in his bed and sit with him until he falls asleep and when he comes to our bed in the middle of the night I let him be as long as he lays down and goes back to sleep, which he does most of the time. If he's wiggly, I send him back to his bed.

There are lots of ideas for indoor exercise/sensory diet when you can't get outside:
Have her move heavy objects, like stacks of books or small weights or toys. You can even stack those items on a blanket and have her pull it across the floor or fill a pillowcase with toys/stuffed animals and have her pack it around the house. One of the best things we had when DS was smaller was a "magic-tunnel". It was about 3 yards of that stretchy tube knit fabric you can find at the fabric store. No sewing involved. The kid crawls in one end and out the other or she can crawl in and you can take a hold of both ends and swing her around.

Another sensory diet thing that seemed to help DS when he was younger (he is almost 7 now) is the Wilbarger Brushing protocol. Google it and you'll find several sites which describe it and some youtube videos. I found that giving DS as much sensory input and exercise as he needs helps calm him at night.

The 1mg sublingual works for us. However, it only gets the child to sleep, doesn't keep them asleep.

And I would seriously hesitate to use it in a 2 year old.

My daughter is 9 and still doesn't sleep through the night. Never has. This is just a fact of life in our household-she wakes 2-3 times a night.

Strangely, my NT nephew is the exact same way...it must be genetic!

I slept with my autistic son every night until a few months ago. He still needs to sleep with someone about half the time. Fortunately, his younger six year old brother likes to sleep with him lately for some reason.

My son had huge difficulties with sleeping when he was younger. He might sleep only two hours on a school night.

We had some fair to good success with books on tape (CD's) .

Used book stores have them. You can get most children's books in audible books. Have the CD loop and IMHO I would choose some books you are already reading to her.

You dont want it to be so interesting it keeps them awake. Just enough to occupy her sweet little mind. My boy had Thomas the train then later star wars.

My mother says that I didn't sleep through the night until I was 4, so it could be worse.