The Night
Her Nights Have Turned Into Days: How to Tell the Problem Is Sleep, Not Just a Bad Night
When her sleep and waking hours swap places, the real problem is her daily rhythm, and you can tell it apart from one rough night by what you write down over a week.
A single rough night does not mean the whole plan has failed. What you are looking for is a pattern: her sleep and her waking hours have swapped places, so she dozes through the afternoon and is wide awake, restless, and up in the small hours. You can tell a bad night from a changed rhythm by writing things down for a week. The notes do most of the work.
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Keep a seven-day log
Put a notebook on the table by her chair or near her bed. Each day, write down four things: the time she went to bed, the time she got up, any nap longer than about an hour, and any time in the evening or night when she was restless or tried to leave. Add one line for anything that seemed to set it off, such as a visitor, a loud television, or a skipped meal. One bad night appears as one line. A pattern shows up as the same shape across several days.
Recognize the signs of a flipped rhythm
A changed rhythm usually looks like this. Her naps lengthen across the week until she sleeps much of the afternoon. She is alert and busy after the house goes quiet, sometimes dressed, sometimes looking for her shoes or her bag. If three or four days in your log look like this, the change is steady enough to act on, and it is worth telling someone who can help you read it.
Keep the room quiet and the light low
When she wakes in the night, your first goal is to bring her back down, not to explain anything. Keep your voice low and your words few. Leave a small lamp on rather than the overhead light, and keep the path to the bathroom clear. Offer a drink of water or a seat in a familiar chair. Save the longer conversation for daylight, when she can take it in more easily.
Take the log to her doctor
Bring the notes to her doctor and ask whether anything else could be behind the change, and what the doctor would like you to watch for next. You do not need to work out the cause yourself. Your log is simply the clearest picture of the home that the doctor can get. For a wider look at how dusk and night behavior fit together, see Sundowning and Wandering, St. Louis. For where the information on this site comes from, see Sources.