After the passing of my Great Grandfather a couple months ago, my Great Grandmother (Grammy) has been diagnosed with early onset dementia, which has caused her to become sporadically aphasic (cannot talk), her short term memory has a span of only 3 minute intervals. She has had to move in with us, as she cannot safely tend to her personal cares any longer. We have set her up in the room down the hall from us with her bed, and a few nice furnishing from her home. So far things are going very well during the day, however nighttime is a bit of a different story.
After her nighttime routine, we put her in her room, getting her nice, and cozy, and tucked in tight. Usually she’d fall asleep after we chat for a bit, but she had been waking up a few times in the night, screaming, and shouting. Unfortunately because of her loss of speech, she cannot tell us what is wrong with her. After offering her a small snack, helping her to the restroom, and re-situating her in bed, Grammy would usually fall back to sleep. However within a couple hours, it’d all start over again, she’d scream out, and cry. This had going on for a week straight, causing us to be so very tired, and working during the day had just become harder, due to the broken sleep. I feared something was physically wrong with her, so I took her to the doctor. After he did a basic work up, the results came back with no definite conclusion. He offered his best suggestion, let her cry it out. He said that she must become used to her surroundings, and she had to get used to sleeping alone again. The doctor continued by explaining that if we keep getting up at night with her, she will get used to us constantly tending to her needs, and become too needy, and will never gain her independence.
I was nervous about this, it makes me sad that we have to do this to her, but its for the best; I do not want to encourage these behaviors of hers. Last night was rough on all of us, Grammy woke today seeming to be well rested, and she was all smiles– I guess her short term memory loss works to our advantage. Great Grandma’s crying it out for 45 minutes last night was all worth our rest. Hopefully, she will soon stop these disturbing behaviors all together, it will make things so much easier on everyone involved. I am thinking if she learned anything from last night, tonight she wont scream, and cry quite as long, she should fall asleep faster; she will learn, eventually.
Sorry Great Grandma, you have to cry it out until you learn better. It’s said to be okay for our delicate infants to cry it out, should work just as well for my frail old Grammy?!
*No Grammy’s were really forced to cry it out– Grammy is a fictional character.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
