We have been lucky that the boy did not develop my tendency toward night terrors. ?Since we are not biologically related that doesn’t come as a surprise. ?I’m very thankful that we have only had two instances of inexplicable middle of the night screaming. ?I’m also lucky that I have not had one in about 6 years. ?Being an adult with night terrors freaks your spouse the hell out.
Only recently has the boy been saying that he’s been having bad dreams. ?He wakes up in the morning and tells us that he had a bad dream. ?We’ve also been told that the reason he rocks is to keep the bad dreams away. ?He says that if he stops rocking he will have bad dreams. ?My poor baby. ?There are some days that we’ll be in the bathroom fixing his hair and he’ll say, “mommy! ?I didn’t have any bad dreams last night.” ?That’s fantastic baby. ?”It’s because I didn’t stop rocking.” ?*heart breaks*
Like I’ve mentioned time and time again, the boy does not get out of his bed. ?I’ve explained to him that if he gets scared he can come get in the bed with me. ?I want him to feel safe and know that we will be there for him. ?Faith is a difficult concept for him to grasp.
Last night we had a breakthrough… at 4:50 a.m.
I was sound asleep when the trusty husband sat up and I could hear him say, “Oleg.” ?That will wake a person up. ?It was the boy crawling into bed with us. ?He had a bad dream. ?I tucked him under the covers and held him tight. ?I told him it was ok and that it was just a bad dream and that mommy was there. ?He let me hold him for a very long time. ?He wasn’t crying, but I could tell that he was scared.
I asked him if he wanted to go back to his bed and he said, “no.” ?I gave him a pillow and said he could stay in our bed, but that we all needed to go back to sleep. ?He wasn’t too fond of the pillow I gave him and kept trying to pillow hog ours. ?Then the cat got in the bed and laid on my legs. ?So basically from 4:50 this morning until I kicked the boy out* at 7:00 I “slept” on 1/10th of my bed. ?And you know… I don’t mind one bit.
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*not being mean, but the alarm had gone off, Derek had gotten in the shower and the boy was laughing at the other cat. ?He needed to go.
Livi has night-terrors often, they are rough
*sniff* What an amazing break through for your sweet boy. We went through something similar with Isaac though now I sometimes wish he would NOT come in at 3 am EVERY NIGHT.
Our little man wakes up every night with bad dreams. Finally we just put a sleeping bag on the floor in our room. At first he just came in every night around 1 am, and now he has so much difficulty falling asleep he just starts out in our room and stays. He’s afraid “a monster” is going to come and take him away from us. He wakes up terrified. Therapist says it’s normal as they get older and understand more of their past for new fears to emerge. Our poor baby. Really, ALL of our poor babies. SOME day he’ll get that this family is forever…(We had a break thorough just the other night. Apparently I made an appearance in his dream, and saved him before the monster could get him…hallelujah, we’re on our way:)
Its a good thing… this crawling in bed with you :)))
Is it weird to say that it’s a relief to hear that I’m not the only adult out there who has night terrors?
Glad Oleg came and snuggled with you. Poor little man.