nin-baby-there-is-no-you-demotivational-poster[1]Although Thomas has been doting on baby Jonathan, Katherine is pretty aloof.  She takes interest in the baby so far only to ensure that he has either no gloves on or both gloves on; if one has fallen off she brings it to us and demands that it be put on.

The major issue for her has been the disruption in her routines.  Normally she would get much more focused Mommy time.  Mommy is now preoccupied with feeding Jonathan, and is often carrying him.  She had several substitute caregivers over the weekend, and now Daddy is taking her to school and picking her up.  For a young lady with autism, she is remarkably flexible, but change stresses every child, particularly one that can’t understand your explanations of why something is happening.  The net effect is that we’ve been getting more frustration- and stress-related behaviors such as shrieking, excessive emphasis on terminal plosives, and worst of all, sleep disruptions.  She woke Tuesday night at 2:50 am and didn’t go back to sleep.  At all.

I’ve been covering Katherine’s night wakings to let Robin focus on Jonathan’s, and it’s a good thing we decided to divide and conquer, since Tuesday night was disastrous.  We worked really hard, as hard as our mutual fatigue would allow, on making Wednesday very standard, low-stress, and happy for her, and I think it worked.  She slept great last night, and woke up happy and ready to go today!

The trick is to keep it up, and make sure that Katherine continues to feel loved and gets attention as she adapts to the new arrival.  I think we failed to take this into account as fully as we should have, but hopefully now that we have a good grasp on the issue we can make progress on resolving it.