Mum keeps sneaking back to bed!!

1953barney

Registered User
Nov 5, 2013
66
0
Suffolk
Has anyone else had this problem mum keeps asking to go to bed from 6.30pm every night. I don't let her go till 8.30 - 9pm as that's when the carer will come next week. She keep getting up at midnight and asking for tea and biscuits. Then off to bed again. Comes and wakes me up at 8am every morning wanting to get in my bed and by the time I am out of bed she is back in bed. She appears then for her breakfast and then starts saying think I will go back to bed. I tell her she is not going back she is going to be washed and dressed. She then says she needs the toilet and off she goes, if I don't follow every time she ends up back in bed. She is not wanting to dress till dinner time, not washing properly and won't let me help. Then she tells me she is so tired as she has been walking all morning!!! We have just moved to a 2 bed bungalow as she wanted to be with me. I am an only one so no siblings to call on. Carers are coming morning and bedtime starting next week and hopefully I should be getting a day/half day to myself each week that I can spend with my daughter. It's so strange when you start a post you could go on typing forever..... Thanks for listening x
 

Beate

Registered User
May 21, 2014
12,179
0
London
Is it really so bad if she wants to go to bed early? Couldn't you adjust the carers time accordingly? If she wants to sleep, let her sleep. The waking up at midnight is annoying, I agree, but she just seems to have her own rhythm, or she feels safest in bed.
 

CJinUSA

Registered User
Jan 20, 2014
1,122
0
eastern USA
Hello. My mother wanted to keep odd hours when she first moved here. I'd fall asleep out of exhaustion on the sofa waiting for her to tire, and she would call out "You are sleeping!" By 11 PM, I was totally wiped out!

We started getting her up earlier and keeping her up, letting her nap after lunch, and then keeping her up through the dinner hour.

At this stage, 5 years later, she sleeps til about 10:30 or 11 AM, when the caregiver gets here. They have breakfast time, then sometimes a small nap for my mother, then lunchtime, and sometimes a small nap, and then she is good to be awake all evening til around 8, when she tires and we get ready for bed. She is in her late 90s, and the Alz diagnosis has been since 2009. She still knows us and is doing pretty well.

My guess? Your mother is seeking the comfort of a familiar place while she adjusts to all the changes in her life. Have you time to go lie down with her when she goes back to bed? Maybe hold her or hold her hand and talk about something she'd likely enjoy talking about? The human comfort might be enough to make her want to get out of bed again. It can produce clingy-ness to do it this way, but she'll get used to having the carers help her, too. I imagine her bed is a comfort zone for her. I hope she settles soon for you.
 

Kevinl

Registered User
Aug 24, 2013
6,064
0
Salford
It's pretty normal, hence I'm posting on here at quarter past one in the morning. Luckily for me I don't need to be up in the morning for work, I work from home.
My wife takes herself off to bed after the evening meal then gets up about midnight for an hour or so then sleeps until about 9 in the morning, however, I'm not sure how much of the time she's actually asleep. I suppose if you have no concept of time or day and night then it doesn't really matter, I've given up trying to impose the conventional "clock" time by which most people try to or have to live by and just go with the flow, I can do this as irregular and disrupted sleep patterns don't bother me too much.
Sometime if she's wide awake at midnight or 1 am we go to the supermarket and do the shopping while it's nice and quiet.
K
 

1953barney

Registered User
Nov 5, 2013
66
0
Suffolk
Hi thanks everyone I kept mum up till 8.30 last night and she was up before me this morning letting the poor cat out and promptly locking the door, although it wasn't closed it was locked! She was back in bed awake saying I have had a wash! (It seems she likes to be in bed with her electric blanket on as she says she can't get warm anywhere else, the central heating is always on between 20/25 and I am in a t shirt its that warm). I then got her up for breakfast, she is still sat 3 hours later in her nightwear saying she will get dressed soon but as I feared she is asleep again. I'm getting on with emptying boxes and hoping I can get her dressed at some point before the heating man comes this afternoon x
 

Tin

Registered User
May 18, 2014
4,820
0
UK
I wish I had just a little of that. My mum hardly ever sits for more than 2 minutes, takes no naps and I am lucky if we get a full nights sleep, usually after going to bed around 8.30pm she is up within half hour chatting and questioning me. its soo tiring.
 

skaface

Registered User
Jul 18, 2011
109
0
Ramsgate
When I visit my mum she often falls asleep in her chair or tells me she "could go back to bed now" so I say "why don't you then?".

My ex's mum was the complete opposite - she'd be up with the lark and walking into Margate from Ramsgate and was like a dynamo. She also had dementia and I'd like to say he had some patience with her but I'm sorry to say he didn't (partly why I'm not with him any more!).
 

1953barney

Registered User
Nov 5, 2013
66
0
Suffolk
Mum used to be asleep all the time but she is just the opposite at present. She said this afternoon that she was going to get a job tomorrow, not bad for nearly 88 years old
 

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