You hear the bed frame before she is halfway up. You are awake before the bathroom light clicks on, and you lie there counting until the door closes again. That job has landed on you, mostly without anyone deciding it should. This guide is about noticing when one person is carrying the whole night, and what to do about it before the next trip goes wrong.
Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.
Check the signs in yourself
Start with what you can observe. Are you waking for every trip, including the ones she makes without calling out? Are you sleeping in your clothes, or keeping the phone on the pillow so you can hear her? Do you dread the evening because you already know the night will be broken? Have you missed work, or snapped at someone, because your sleep came in short pieces? Answer each question yes or no. Any yes is worth taking seriously, and more than one means the plan is leaning on you harder than you can hold.
Test the backup, not the idea of one
Pick a night when you cannot be the one who answers. It can be a planned evening away or a night you simply switch the phone off. Then see what happens. Who is the first name she would call, or who would hear her at all? Does that person know which switch to press, where the walker is standing, and that the bathroom door sticks? If the honest answer is nobody, or that she would probably wait until morning, you do not have a backup yet. You have a hope, and hope does not get her to the toilet safely.
Log the hours you are covering
Keep a plain log for two weeks. Write the time of each trip you heard, the time you got up, and the time you fell back asleep. Put a line through any night you slept straight through. You are not building a case for anyone. You are finding out how many hours of the night are actually coming to you, so the decision about help rests on what happened and not on how tired you felt at breakfast.
What to do, in order
When the log and the test show a gap, work through these steps in this order.
First, tell her physician about the nighttime trips and the falls, and ask whether the sleep pattern or any part of the route should be looked at. Those are clinical questions, so take them to the physician rather than settling them yourself.
Second, name one person for each of the next three nights, and write their phone number on the sheet by the bed. Ask that person to walk the route once in daylight with you, so they can see the light switches, the rug edge, and the step at the bathroom door.
Third, call the services listed on the local help page for St. Louis and ask what they cover overnight, how quickly they can start, and what happens when the person they send is sick. Ask them to put those answers in writing.
Write this down before you need it
On one sheet, record who covers each night of the week, who the first call is if that person cannot come, what she should do if she falls and you cannot be reached, and the numbers for her physician and her pharmacy. Keep the sheet where you keep the phone. When a name changes, mark the change at the top so nobody works from an old copy.
You are not failing because you are tired. You have been the only one on that route, and that is a problem with a fix. Start with the log, because it will tell you which fix comes first. For the St. Louis numbers and the people who answer them, begin with the local help page.