has anyone used a pillow spray or soothing cream etc which actually works? Not necessarily for elderly parents but in general?
We have lavender pillow sprays in the house which are nice but we don't really have trouble sleeping so I don't know if they really work.
Basically MIL will sometimes (well, often) just not want to sleep until 1 or 2 am even if you can get the night routine done with plenty of soothing shoulder cream and foot rub and hot water bottles. Its like her mind goes into overdrive and although we take her through things gently and confirm that everyone is in the right bed and doors are locked and everyone is accounted for she just can't calm (she has dementia which I assume is the root cause of this)
When she does sleep she is often awake and agitated again between 3 and 4 and so doesn't really settle until 4am or so. It means whoever is with her is constantly only able to doze through the night and makes it almost impossible to handle any type of appointments or get her to her 'club' which is dementia focussed and really beneficial for her on the days she should go.
I suggested sleeping tablets, even herbal, to try and help her relax and stay asleep once she dozes off, but apparently the doctor dislikes prescribing them unless absolutely necessary - a part of me thinks BIL is simply unhappy with "drugging" his mum as a concept but either way sleeping tablets are not an option at the moment.
So - do any of the sleep creams or the pillow sprays etc genuinely work? It has to be topical and daily application because occasionally things go the other way and she wants to go to bed at 6pm because its dark so we don't want a diffuser or something that will impact her of an afternoon too
Basically something that calms the mind, stops it racing and means that she can get into deep sleep. Once we have her there she sleeps well, mostly.
Yes we do keep her awake as far as is viable in the day and yes we do get her up in the morning - anything after a 9am wake up is unusual, but she can sometimes keep going on a couple of hours sleep and none of us can, so its incredibly difficult for everyone (and FIL is disrupted when the day goes off kilter too) when we can't keep some type of night/day routine in place.