I kept my mom for a few days. My dad sits up with her at night so she doesn't get into anything. I gave him a break and let him sleep. I got a 30 min nap and the rest of the night I was up while mom was walking around the house. Any advice? Thinking about Benadryl.
Is she not not getting enough exercise during a typical day? Try more physical activity. All of us sleep harder and better (and wake clearer) with a bit of physical activity.
You can also add more mental stimulation during the day. Try to limit daytime naps to thirty minutes or less.
I would try to avoid the "PM" medications and Benedryl. They make my brain "foggy" in the morning. I realized after taking one one night and waking up foggy that Benedryl is not a great thing and giving it to my Husband that had dementia might be making his poor foggy brain even foggier.
Melatonin can help and it is safe BUT once a person is asleep if they get up and turn on a light the light disturbs/destroys the serotonin that the melatonin helped. So if she needs to get up to go to the bathroom often it might not be a good solution.
I would talk to the doctor to see what safe effective medications might help. Keep in mind many have "sleepwalking" as a side effect so someone will still have to be aware if she gets out of bed. At that point maybe a bed alarm might be an answer.
It's kind of a yin-yang thing. More serotonin, less melatonin during the day to keep you awake. Less serotonin, more melatonin at night to keep you asleep.
My SW did a similar thing. I kept a log and found she got up 70% of nights and went back to bed 60% of those nights. So out of 100 nights she got up 70 times and back to bed 42 times. Overall she got enough sleep. There was no pattern; it was just random behavior governed by a demented mind which works at random. No docs. No meds. I toughed it out and it passed. A few months. Was it easy? No!
The log was an attempt to pin down a possible outside influence which might be causing the above behavior. Nothing ever presented as cause and effect. This led to a re-analysis of the records thence to the conclusion of merely random behavior.