Nighttime Fears

Some will read this post and judge.  Others may relate and perhaps sympathize.  Some will probably think we're being played.... c'est la vie.

For years Drew has had issues sleeping at night - with night terrors going back to around the age of two (if not earlier).  Now they've mostly progressed to nightmares - but there are still night terrors mixed in.  It's gotten so bad recently he will begin crying at 5:30pm about the fact he has to go to bed in a few hours and he is terrified to close his eyes.

Around Halloween Drew's nightmares reached an all-time high (at the time) and we attributed a lot of the issues to the scary things you saw every time you went to the store or saw any holiday decorations. The dreams and fears started to dissipate as Halloween passed, but then picked up again late in December.  And I mean picked up to a new form of... well torture is all I can think to describe it. 

Late December Drew had what I would call cluster nightmares.  He'd wake up in a terrified scream (you would think someone was attacking him physically.. kind of blood curdling scream) every 20-40 minutes.  We'd go into his room, calm him down, get him to fall asleep to only repeat less than an hour later.  This went on over a couple of weeks.

While with some kids I could see this as a ploy to get their way in the middle of the night, and I know when my child is trying to play us, but you cannot fake that kind of a scream.  We were frustrated, exhausted - which didn't help with the frustration - and we would often get mad at Drew to "just go back to sleep!  Don't scream like that!" (Dave actually fell one night trying to race to Drew thinking he was really hurt - and nearly knocked our tv off it's stand).

We have a blow-up mattress (a Scooby bed) alongside our bed which we said was OK for him to get into in the middle of the night -but he couldn't sleep in our bed.  For those who don't know or have pleasantly forgotten... the only one who sleeps when you have a child in the bed with you, is the child.  They flail, kick, and punch in their sleep.  Most unpleasant.  So we settled for Scooby.  Well for a while there it was enough to lay in Scooby.  Then he started having nightmares in his Scooby bed so I would have to hold his hand so he could fall asleep.

Seems rather sweet right? No it's torture!  Our bed is elevated.  Scooby is on the floor.  I'm only 5'5" and while I think I have monkey arms, they're not that long.  It hurts to reach that far - my shoulder nearly rips out its socket after about 30 seconds.  When I came down with sinus crud, that was the end of hand holding to get him to sleep.  Conveniently Dave was able to sleep through most of these hand holding sessions because Scooby is on my side of the bed - so I was the only sleep deprived one.

While fighting the sinus crud, desperately needing sleep - I convinced Dave that Drew should sleep in our bed.  Drew wasn't sleeping and it was starting to carry over to school as well.  He was so tired that it was making everything worse - going to sleep, the dreams, everyone's frustration level....

Since he started sleeping with us, nightmares are at a minimum and we're easily able to calm him down when he's next to us.  We do move him sometimes to his Scooby bed, and we have dreams of moving him back to his room as soon as possible....

Even in our room he requires nightlights, TVs on (although its not on all night), bathroom lights on, book lights are preferable and if he had his way the entire bedroom light would remain on.  He hates the dark, he hates being "lonely" and he hates to close his eyes. 

Over the weekend he had another rough night - with a nightmare about fire near his feet - that he refused to close his eyes for hours.  I periodically would wake up and find these big brown eyes staring straight at me.  This went on from about 2am - 4:30am. 

Poor kid.  So yes, he's sleeping in our bed.  While it's not ideal, at least we are all getting at least some sleep.

One night earlier this month when he was too afraid to fall asleep in our bed alone, he cuddled with Daddy on his chair.