The Summer Without Sleep

It's about 11:30 pm now.  Janey is awake, wide awake, watching TV.  Last night, she slept not at all.  This used to be an unusual, shocking thing, that she could go totally without sleep all night now.  It's not any more.  In time since school ended for the year, there's been about six nights without sleep, without ANY sleep.  There was one last Thursday, just five days before last night's non-sleep night.  I hope there's some sleep tonight.  It seems like there would have to be.  But maybe not.

What is going on?  For most of Janey's life, sleep has been one of her lesser issues.  There were always occasional insomnia nights, but not a huge amount, and very rarely ones with no sleep.  Something changed recently.

I don't have a lot of theories.  One of the few I have is that it's just her age.  She is almost 15, and that is an age you start staying up later.  I've read that it's theorized it's biologically hard-wired, because it gives teenagers a time to relate without older or younger people awake, and that leads, indirectly, to the human race continuing.  Maybe Janey is feeling that draw, to be up at night when others aren't.  But while most teenagers might realize not to take it too far, to eventually sleep, Janey doesn't.  She just stays awake.  And she doesn't get the desired alone time.  We can't leave her alone.  If she's awake, we are awake, or trying hard to be awake.

If Tony hadn't retired early, if he had to get up for work each day...well, we'd have dealt with it, because what else can you do?  But even with him home, it's very, very hard.  After missing a night's sleep, even with the two of us trading off, you aren't yourself.  It's hard to explain unless you've had a period of being chronically sleep-deprived.  It feels like you aren't fully alive.  It feels like everything is happening in a daze, a mist.  You can't do anything that requires thought or effort.  It's like your mind tries to half sleep even when you are awake.

Janey started summer school this week.  I don't know if she slept at school today. We have always sent her to school even when she doesn't sleep, as unlike Tony or me, she seems little affected the day after not sleeping.  Even after the day after becomes the night after, she just doesn't seem sleepy.  She often stays up quite late the night after not sleeping at all.

We plan on talking to Janey's psychiatrist soon about this not sleeping.  Right now, we do give her melatonin, as we have for years, for all the good it does.  When I take melatonin, which I do now and then, I fall asleep always in about half an hour.  I don't know if it does a thing for Janey any more.  Her pediatrician has told us it's okay to give her Benadryl on the very worst insomnia nights, but that also now seems to have no effect.  If I ever take Benedryl, I'm knocked out like a light.  So I don't think any other sleep medicine is going to work.  The urge to be awake on the non-sleep nights is stronger than most anything.

It's gotten so we can tell ahead of time when Janey's not going to sleep a certain night.  The main giveaway seems to be her attention span getting extremely short.  On evenings before she sleeps, she changes YouTube videos or songs absolutely constantly, after about 10 seconds.  She watches the same pieces of video over and over and over, separated by little pieces of a different video.  She paces while she does this, and often does her OCD routines---straightening out the remotes on the living room table, turning on and off lights or the AC, doing spot checks to make sure we aren't crossing our legs or arms---the routines we've seen for many a year, but in a more intense way than usual.

The non-sleeping probably affects me almost out of proportion.  When I don't sleep, I feel hopeless and isolated.  It can feel, in the middle of a long, sleepless night, like we are on a little island or planet, completely alone.  It can feel like morning will never actually arrive.  It can seem like Janey will never sleep again, that this will go on forever and ever and ever.  I know my mind plays tricks on me when I don't sleep.  It can make my outlook pretty bleak.

And now it's close to midnight.  Janey is awake, watching a video she has watched many times tonight, one where a woman spells the names of animals after pronouncing their names in odd ways---KAN-grew for Kangaroo.  That, and the one where Mr. Harlow opens surprise eggs, and the three cats called Cutians, and Coco-Melon videos, all the videos on heavy repeat during sleepless nights---well, if I never hear any of them again, that would just be fine.  Let's hope for a few hours sleep tonight, and let's hope the summer someday becomes a sleepy fall.

The Mystery of the No Sleep Nights

My mother is a huge fan of mystery series books, like the Nancy Drew or the Judy Bolton ones.  The title pays homage to that, and to the fact sometimes life with Janey can feel like a long series of mysteries.  One of the biggest ones is why sometimes Janey simply skips a full night of sleep.

Overall, sleep is not one of the biggest issues we usually face with Janey, at least not compared to a lot of kids with autism. (knocking on wood here, of course!)  She goes to bed fairly early, usually somewhere around 7 or 7:30, and gets up early, about 6.  While she's asleep, she barely moves, and we can usually be as loud as we want to around our small house without waking her.

However, once in a while, probably 10 times in her life, Janey has just plain skipped a night of sleep.  When this happens, she doesn't sleep at all.  Not one wink.  And almost always, the next day she isn't particularly sleepy.  It's like for that one night, she just didn't need to sleep.

I don't have seven clues, but I have a few!

This happened most recently Thanksgiving night.  Janey was not in a good mood for Thanksgiving.  November is often one of her tougher months, and she'd had a fairly rough week.  There was a lot of screaming that day, so we were looking forward to a night's break.  But she just never went to sleep.  Tony stayed up with her until about midnight, then I took over.  The funny thing was that she was much more cheerful during her normal sleeping hours than she was the day before or the day after.  Although she wasn't sleeping, it was like she was in a different mode than regular daytime.  She was up until 5 pm on Black Friday, then went to sleep and slept all night.

What do we do all night on a no sleep night?  Mainly watch videos.  I could insist that we turn off the TV, but I know that would do no good.  Believe me, I've tried, and believe me also, once you get a ways into a no sleeping night, you do whatever you have to do to get through the night.  When Janey is watching videos, I stay right near her on the couch and struggle to keep my eyes open, and change videos when she needs me to.  Sometimes she asks for a ride or a shower, but in a mild way.  She seems to know what she can do in the middle of the night and what she can't do.

There isn't much of a pattern to these no sleep nights.  Sometimes they happen when she's in a good mood, sometimes bad.  Sometimes she seems manic, sometimes there is no sign at all she won't sleep.  Sometimes we realize she's had chocolate after noontime, which disrupts her sleep badly.  Sometimes she has eaten nothing out of the ordinary.

As I often do lately when trying to figure Janey out, I think of what any teenage girl of 14 would be doing.  Although I think my sleep at that age was pretty regular, of course sometimes I stayed up late.  This was usually when spending the night at a friend's house.  I know there were lots of nights that I was up until 3 or 4 am laughing hysterically with friends, probably discussing who had a crush on who for hours on end.  Maybe an occasional late night or no sleep night is just something Janey needs, to break up the routine a bit.

Another theory I have is that the no sleep happens when Janey's brain is working on processing something new.  Lately, we've noticed her talking is on an upswing.  We've been hearing some longer, more complete sentences---for example, instead of saying "Go to the store!"  she might say something like "I want to go for a car ride to the store" or "I want to get salami at the store"  This isn't all the time; it's still pretty rare, but it's nice to hear.  She has also been reversing pronouns a bit less.  One night she wanted a shower, and I said "I'll give you a shower in a minute" and she said "You give me a shower in a minute"  which surprised me quite a bit.  Maybe when her brain is making new connections, it's hard to sleep.

When the nights happen rarely, as they do, we can manage it, especially now that Tony is retired.  But if they ever started happening on a regular basis, like more than once a week or even once a month, it would be very hard to take.  Janey needs to be watched at all times.  I think about parents who have kids with much more severe sleep issues than Janey, and my heart goes out to them.  It's a case where I have to hold myself back from saying what I myself don't like to hear---"I don't know how you do it"---because I do know how you do it.  You do what you have to do.  You scrape by.  You drink a lot of coffee and take naps when you have a moment's respite.  You live with a sleep deficit.  But I know it's not easy.  As I write this at 8 pm, Janey is fast asleep, and I hope everyone reading this gets a good night's sleep---if not tonight, some night soon!