Help with night waking

03 May 2017

Help with night waking

03 May 2017

Mum Tammy was struggling to cope with her daughter’s night waking. Our Sleep Practitioner Claire Varey describes how she gave them some practical advice and support and Tammy explains the impact this has had for her family.

 

“I first had contact with Tammy back in July 2016. Tammy had completed one of our sleep questionnaires and a sleep diary which gave some basic information about her daughter’s sleep habits. I arranged telephone support for Tammy and we discussed the issues that her daughter, Amelia, who was 4 at the time, had with sleep.

Amelia has Autism and likes the things she likes, but it can be very difficult to get her to engage in any activities or interests if she doesn’t want to. There had been some progress, but Tammy was finding it difficult with the late nights, spending a long time settling Amelia and the continued night waking episodes. Amelia was also having day time naps and was quite reliant on her tablet.

We discussed how these things may be impacting on her and agreed some changes to their routine that may help with settling at night – and hopefully over time improve Amelia’s night waking. We identified that having a bath as part of Amelia’s bed time routine may be stimulating her and so I suggested moving it to earlier in the evening. I felt it would also help to introduce some calming activities, supper and massage before bed.

For Amelia’s bedroom we spoke about using the relaxing scent of lavender to help Amelia associate her bed with being calm and sleep. Also the introduction of a red light would help her understand that it was time for sleep and, if she should wake at night, the red light and the scent of lavender, would help her understand that it was still time for sleep.

The other important factor to look at was the day time nap. We spoke about trying to reduce the length and time Amelia slept – this was especially important as Amelia would be starting full time school within the next 6 months.

We keep in touch via text and although progress has been up and down, there has been an overall positive improvement. Amelia is getting more sleep, she has dropped her day time nap, is settling well and has a better quality of sleep. This is also having a positive effect on her mood and concentration”.

Tammy told us the impact the support Claire has given her has had on her and Amelia:

“From my first telephone conversation with Claire I felt hugely positive about the task that lay ahead. The ultimate goal was to gain more sleep for Amelia and ourselves but for now any step no matter how small would make a huge difference.  Understanding the basics of how sleep works was a massive eye opener. It was really interesting and helped answer some questions I didn’t really know I had until Claire explained sleep patterns to me.

At the end of our first phone call I was yawning my head off so knew I was onto something good.

With Claire’s help we managed to identify that a bath actually stimulates Amelia’s body and so has the reverse effect. Claire advised me to do something with Amelia to get rid of excessive energy for 10 minutes; to use lavender in the bath with some in her room, delta wave music and a red light in Amelia’s bedroom. I felt that the light and the music didn’t do very much but the lavender helped a lot. Very quickly I noticed the time it took Amelia to switch off went from between one to two hours to between 5 and 35 minutes.

When we first started our journey Amelia was having naps after school so Claire explained about not letting it go past an hour, which we didn’t always do especially if Amelia wasn’t right in herself. Since actively encouraging less naps Amelia’s body has naturally adjusted and she now has no naps in the day.

Claire is amazing she listens and is genuinely interested. She regularly checks how we are doing and even though we have never met she has been a fairy godmother for us. Claire is happy to go with what worked for us, never stressing that we shouldn’t be in bed with Amelia which we still are and allowing us to set our own goals.

In the past few weeks Amelia has started going to school until the end of the day and is now in bed between 8pm and 10pm. She still stirs in the night but isn’t awake as often as she was before.

Amelia seems to be learning more and I am sure a lot of this is down to her brain not being as tired”.

If you’d like some help from our Sleep Service you can find our more here.

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