Autumn is gusty in my part of the world. And the strong, Cape south-easter brings weather with it. As clouds rolled in this afternoon and the breeze stiffened, I felt a familiar pang of anxiety. Because wind disturbs Aidan’s sleep.
A lot of autistic children struggle with sleep. As of yet, nobody knows why. But they seem to get by with far less than the rest of us. Aidan was a terrible sleeper from day one, and still is. He slept quite deeply as a newborn, but only for short stints, and he needed constant contact – like a hand on his chest. As he grew older, he became a lighter sleeper, and even if we managed to create the exact right conditions for optimal sleep, he’d still have the odd doozy of a night.
When he was a baby, he was a cat-napper. He never slept for longer than a couple of hours. He’d wake like clockwork for a bottle and he needed that bottle to be delivered into his hands just as soon as he began to stir. After a couple of weeks of struggle, we began to sleep in shifts so there was always someone awake with him. That made fast and efficient bottle delivery far easier. But when I took over the nights solo, I had to train myself to sleep lightly enough to hear the slightest rustle from his baby nest or cot. And it was then that I noticed how many things affected Aidan’s sleep.
Our son would wake up if a light was turned on, or a tap was run, or a toilet was flushed, or someone wore shoes walking in the corridor, or there was distant chatter or a TV on in the house. He’d be woken by traffic, car horns, music at a neighbour’s house, a distant house alarm, dogs barking, frogs chirping, owls hooting, rain, thunder and especially wind. In the summer he’d wake frequently if he was hot, or a mosquito buzzed in his ear. There were so many noise disturbances completely beyond our control, that we kept things in our household as quiet as humanly possible. Whether it was nap time or bed time, there was total darkness and absolute silence. Our whole household came to an unnatural pause, to give him the best chance of getting good sleep.
Looking back, it was a crazy way to live! My parents were pretty vocal about us reinforcing Aidan’s need for silence by keeping everything quiet. My Dad would often recount how close friends of his in Italy would take kids of all ages to dinner at busy restaurants late at night, and the little ones would contentedly doze through all the busyness, in their car seats under the table. And I’m sure that was the case for many sociable Italian families! But it was never the case for us. And it could never have been, because Aidan is neurodivergent.
When you’re the parent of a special needs child, you adapt to their needs. It’s not the other way around. It feels like many friends of ours have had children that have kept step with the busy pace of their lives. Moms who have strapped their babies to them to wander around Sunday markets, catch a coffee with a friend, attend a braai on a summer’s evening, climb a mountain, bicycle along the Sea Point promenade, or attend a busy event. None of this was ever possible for us. And though we have a lot more freedoms now, to some extent, a lot of it still isn’t. At three, Aidan is a marginally better sleeper. But he still needs to fall asleep at home, within a strict routine. And we still creep around our house, because noise disturbances are still a problem. We spend the latter part of every night in absolute silence.
