I do!! I need sleep!!! But apparently my children do not. I learned long ago that I am not in a good place when I don’t get enough sleep. I get grouchy, irritable, and sometimes have headaches associated with the lack of sleep. Not to mention the stress that comes with just wishing and willing your kids to sleep and nothing you do will get them there.

With our son, it can be blamed on his genetic microdeletion; anyway that’s what one of his doctors told us somewhere along the way in the early days after his diagnosis. Something along the lines of chromo kids sometimes get disregulated and they mix up night and day. Oh neat. That sounds fun. Only it isn’t at all. We’re currently in the midst of one of these disregulation cycles or whatever you want to call it. So for the past couple of weeks, Little Man’s new schedule is to wake up sometime in the 3:00 AM hour and stay awake until 5:00 or so, then crash for another couple hours and drag out of bed for me to get him ready for preschool on the days that he goes. Only the latest bit of fun to be thrown in is that my husband (Little Man’s dad) is out of town for work, and the trip keeps getting extended. So what was going to be “four-ish days” is now heavily pushing toward the “ish” part of that guesstimate and mama might just lose her mind.

One other fun little addition to this sleep nightmare is Little Man’s little sister. She is 10-months-old and still breastfeeds throughout the night, which in essence makes me her human pacifier, and – try as we might – she has absolutely no interest in actual pacifiers, which her brother still loves from time to time at 4-and-a-half years old. She is also still invading our bedroom, so I’ll work to get her down to sleep up there, then trudge down the stairs and make an attempt at getting her brother settled (after he’s had time for his sleep meds to start kicking in, and had his dose of seizure meds). For a couple of months he toyed with us and started to fall asleep in his own bed, with a bottle but without our presence to help calm him. Right around the time that these fun crack of dawn wakeups started happening again, he decided to also become a wild man at bedtime. So if I leave him for any time at all in his bed, it will be about two minutes before I hear his feet thud onto the floor as he gets up, rips his oxygen cannula off (or just gets tangled in it), and resettles himself on the big Luv Sac in his room so he can push Scout’s buttons while continuing to drink his bottle, slam his feet onto the floor, and occasional scream excitedly. Not exactly the picture of a relaxed child getting ready to sleep for the night. Some evenings he leaves his room and returns to the magical laundry room, but that’s a subject for another day.

So in a moment of desperation yesterday, I drove to my friend’s house and bought a bottle of the CBD oil she sells and has touted as a miracle worker for her boys’ (both on the spectrum) sleep and general moods. We were really wanting to talk to doctors at a specific office down in Denver before taking this step, but given that we had asked both of our son’s neurologists at previous appointments if CBD plays nice with his current meds, they didn’t seem too worried but wanted to be kept updated if we did decide to try it, especially if we are still wanting to try to wean seizure meds at that time. We’ve just been nervous about pulling the trigger, so no time like the present desperate time, right?! If last night is any indication of how it might go, I could be all about it! After I laid with him in a partial body hold to get him to fall asleep, he still didn’t seem to be resting totally peacefully (I could see him on the baby monitor playing with his hands after I thought he was asleep, and when I checked throughout the night I sometimes couldn’t see him so I thought he had shifted to a part of his bed that’s not in view or was up and playing), but when I went in around 7:00 this morning, he was still in bed (awake) under his light blanket and weighted blanket! He doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of usage of blankets at this point, so I’m confident he hadn’t actually gotten out of bed yet. Color me cautiously excited.