Sleep? What's that?

It's 7am but I've been awake for 2 hours. Not by choice but because I have these two kids who think they don't require sleep. John and I are both so exhausted from fighting bedtimes, middle of the night cries, and way too early morning wake-up calls that he half way joked last night that maybe we should just get a king size bed so we can all sleep together.

Aside from their first year of life, we've been pretty adamant about not co-sleeping with our kids unless one of them is sick or there is a bad storm. Sarah Hazel was always a tough one to get to sleep as she has just never required much but once she was sleepy, she loved being alone in her bed. At a year old, Cameron went from the Pack N Play to his crib with no transition issues. We never figured it out, but up until last summer, he was oversleeping to the point of it being a concern. Oversleeping as in sleeping 17 hours a day.

Sometime before the age of 2.5, Sarah Hazel dropped her nap. It wasn't a huge deal to me as it gave us more time together during the day but by the time 8pm rolls around, I'm ready for some non-kid time. The kicker is my sleepless Sarah Hazel isn't ready to go to bed at 8. Actually, she's never ready to go to bed. She's the human form of the Energizer bunny. We have to give her Melatonin every night around 7:45 or else it's anyone's guess as to when she'll finally fall asleep. Without the Melatonin, we've found she also has more occurrences of extreme night terrors. For that reason alone, it's pretty much a necessity to give her a dose. With or without the Melatonin, she's still up before daylight on most days.

And then there's Cam who has no rhyme or reason to his sleep patterns. He will go for weeks with 4 hours naps and sleeping peacefully from 7:30 to 8:00 and then he goes into a pattern of 2 hour naps with short naps throughout the night. Sometimes he just sits in his room for hours and sings to himself but other times he screams and kicks the crib at which point I have no choice but to go in and calm him. He's currently in one of his mini nap phases with no long stretch of sleep. He's also hit the clingy phase and wants me in the room with him. We've tried Melatonin on him but it has zero effect. I rock him until I'm falling asleep at which point I end up desperately bringing him to bed with me. No matter what I try, he just won't fall asleep. I admit to giving him the iPad, Leapster, or Mobigo in his crib just so I can get an extra bit of rest.

 I'm out of ideas.

Let me just throw it out there that sleep issues are common traits not only in Autism but also giftedness. I guess we were doomed from the get go. Way back in the early days of this blog, I used to write about all of Sarah Hazel's long sleepless nights and how high maintenance she was. I didn't see it then, but now it all makes sense.