Night of screams...

Some nights are truly awful and here is an example of one night of Reuben's sleep....

At 7pm I put Reuben in his bed with a bottle of milk while I sit in the rocking chair next to him...Once he finishes his bottle he becomes unsettled and wants out of bed...So he sits on my lap cuddled into my chest...soon after half an hour he is asleep and I can feel him twitching every now and then... Once he goes into a settled, deep sleep I lift him into his bed and put the monitor on.

He slept till 12am without stirring which is good for him and then it all went downhill fast... I woke up to the monitor vibrating so go in to see him to find him screaming... lift him up and his body starts to go rigid and I know then that I'm in for a long night...He screams , screams and screams, nothing I do will settle him... he gets very frustrated and starts pushing me away so I put him down which make him cry even more so lift him again ...he just doesnt know what he wants at this point... part of him wants to cuddle into me, part of him just wants to not be touched.... this goes on for nearly 2 hours by which time Im exhausted and frustrated and upset with myself as I feel as his mum I should be able to stop him from screaming/crying but I cant...Im frustrated at him not being able to communicate and tell me whats wrong, if he is in pain etc... Its so hard having an non - verbal child who cannot communicate in any form... Leo & Lucas are awake now so I tell them to go back to bed and bring Reuben downstairs into the living room away from upstairs so that he cant disturb his brothers who are trying to go back to sleep..I feel so sorry for them sometimes esp as they have school and I worry that they will be over tired and grumpy... Reuben stops his crying about 20 mins after we came downstairs and quite happily sat on the sofa next to me with his wee light up keyboard while I was lying there playing with my Kindle and wishing that I had a blanket as I was freezing! After an hour of playing with the lights he cuddled into me and promptly fell asleep! Twitching started up again so waited a wee while then carried him upstairs and put him into his bed... walked out only for him to wake up and start crying so I quickly get into bed with him to stop him starting to scream again and he lay with me , fidgeting, stroking my skin and this lasted for another hour and half by which point it was almost 530 and I was thinking "what is the point in going to sleep when I have to be awake soon for boys going to school" when I felt him relax so I thought I would just close my eyes for a min... 2 hrs later I was woken by Reuben leaning on me , smiling! No sign of the grumpy , irratable child from lack of sleep!! I swear he runs on Duracell as I do not know where he gets his energy from!!! 

A rare photo with a blanket as due to his sensory issues I have to wait till he is in a very deep sleep before attempting to put a blanket on him .....he often wakes up when I do this as he cant seem to tolerate the feeling of them on him so its rare that he stays asleep with a blanket on him!!