I’m a massive animal lover! And I’m quite fond of reptiles and some bugs too. I think that makes me the exception! The only things I don’t deal well with are cockroaches, praying mantises, flies, and mosquitoes. Ever since I became a mom, mosquitoes are my absolute worst! Because they not only disturb Aidan’s sleep with their high pitched buzzing, they also cause meltdowns in the middle of the night when they bite him. Truthfully, there’s a lonnnnng list of things that keep Aidan up at night. Hell, even the wind blowing can cause a sleepless night! But itchiness and congestion are top of that list by a long way. Because when Aidan gets itchy, he gets super angry and frustrated. 

Each season has its own challenges, here in South Africa. But by far the biggest annoyance in summertime are our extra thirsty, bloodsucking mosquitoes. They spend their days attached to bathroom ceilings, and hiding inside showers or cupboards. But as soon as the sun goes down, they come out in force! They’re even more prolific after a summer rain, as they’re quick to breed and multiply within stagnant pools of water on the school fields nearby. And because we have so many mozzies, we also get a lot of spiders where we live which isn’t great either. Some are more worrisome than others, and we regularly get in Verminator Pest Control to spray both the inside and outside of our house for them. We don’t want Aidan to get bitten by something venomous – which has unfortunately happened before. We are now very careful not to leave toys out in the garden, and especially not overnight. We also keep him away from the underneath of his jungle gym, our deckchairs, gutter pipes and the front gates. Whether Aidan gets bitten by a mosquito or a spider, it feels like every insect bite is a huge drama!

Because Aidan can’t tolerate the smell of his Deet-free mosquito repellent cream while awake, I have to put it on him once he’s fallen asleep. That means the mozzies have a window of opportunity between when the lights go out at bedtime, and Aidan falling into a deep enough sleep for me to apply his cream, to bite him like crazy. It’s almost impossible to completely prevent bites from happening, so I have a contingency plan for when they do. If Aidan wakes up crying and scratching in the middle of the night, I have an antihistamine cream on my bedside table which I liberally apply to the area that’s bothering him. It seems to be enough to take the itch out of his itchy bites. We literally go through tubes and tubes of the stuff each summer. And each autumn, I wait impatiently for the temperature to drop low enough to ensure that those nasty mozzies are no longer flying around. Because it’s an absolute mission to apply cream by hand to every single part of your child’s body that could become exposed by rolling around in his sleep, and get ravaged overnight. It’s face, ears, neck, upper chest, tummy, hands and feet. Needless to say, we buy our repellent in bulk! And the need for its application every summer night, means our evening is divided into two halves of prep: Setting up the bed for bedtime, and creaming Aidan up for as peaceful a night as possible once he’s fallen asleep. 

I don’t know if every special needs family takes these sorts of nightly precautions… but we do. Because nobody wants to deal with adverse behaviours or aggressions in the pitch darkness. While meltdowns during the day can sometimes be alarming, meltdowns overnight are even more overwhelming. Most especially from a safety point of view. Honestly, I never imagined that a single tiny insect could cause such a big kerfuffle in my household, but here we are! Annoyingly, while they can seem pointless and irritating to us humans, mosquitoes do play a substantial role in the ecosystem. Mosquitoes form an important source of biomass in the food chain, providing food for fish, birds, small reptiles, and important pollinators. But oh boy, do I hate them with a fiery passion! Least favourite creature by a country mile!