Stacie Sherman

If she sleeps, she pees. If she pees, she sleeps.

That is my current state of affairs. My daughter has had sleep issues for as long as I can remember. She also has nocturnal enuresis — a fancy term for involuntary urination while sleeping.

I have tried just about everything to solve both problems.

When she was younger, I took her to urologists. She had ultrasounds. She had a cystoscopy, a procedure that let the doctor see the inside of her urinary tract. Nothing was out of order. I tried medications that were supposed to keep her dry through the night. I tried waking her a few times during the night to pee. I tried bed alarms. I tried limiting her drinks after dinner. And still she pees.

Imagine my horror when she became too big for diapers. I had to start buying adult incontinence products.  At least they’re covered with my flexible spending account! (Always a bright side)

Then there was the sleep issue. Every few months, my daughter has trouble sleeping. She will go for long periods where she wakes up in the middle of the night. Sometimes she goes back to sleep, sometimes she doesn’t. I used to wake up and beg her to go back to sleep. She may be autistic, but she’s still a headstrong teenager. The more I told her to go to sleep, the longer she stayed up.

Now, when she wakes up in the middle of the night, I try to stay as quiet as possible, and to keep the house dark so she understands it is not party time. Usually, she will watch a video in her room and then go back to sleep. Other times, she will head downstairs to the kitchen, help herself to cold rice/noodles, drink whatever drink anyone left out for her to grab and watch her videos for hours.

On mornings after bad sleep nights, the two of us are not at our best. I shuffle her off to school, where they are way better able to handle her than I am. Then I sleepwalk to work, where I must be wide-eyed and alert. Coffee becomes my best friend.

I, too, have sleep issues. I’ve had them since the day my son was born. I had postpartum depression, became overwhelmed with my new responsibility for another life. I would lay awake, waiting for him to cry. I would check on him to make sure he was still breathing. I would toss and turn.

I’m way less overwhelmed now, but sleep issues remain. I take some meds that do the trick most of the time. I can’t take the meds that knock you out cold, though. I have to be able to wake up if my daughter wakes up.

For my daughter, some sleep medications work for a while, then lose their effectiveness. Other sleep meds make it worse.

Last week, her sleep was awful. This week is better.

So that means I have have done laundry every morning this week. Most times she sleeps through the night, she wakes up wet. I have a waterproof mattress cover, thankfully. I put her in Depends at night, they rarely work. So she wakes up, I help her out of her wet clothes, give her a bath, help her get dressed, grab her wet pajamas, strip her bed and head downstairs to the washing machine.

My son knows the drill. “How’d you sleep, mom?” he asks me almost every morning. “Good, bud,” I reply. “Well, I guess you’ll be doing laundry today!” he says. Yep.

Or: “How’d you sleep, mom?”  “Awful, bud,” I reply. “Well, at least you don’t have to do laundry today!” he says. Yep.

I need my sleep. So does my daughter. If we are well-rested, we handle our days so much better. I will do laundry every day for the rest of my life as long as she sleeps well.

It is what it is.