Last night Kwabena came to our bedroom around midnight to climb into bed with us. It doesn’t matter how many times I reinforce to him that if he wakes up in the middle of the night, he should stay in his bed; he still comes over. Not all the time. But if he wakes up, you can guarantee that he will come to our bed.
So last night he came to our bed. And around 3:30 a.m. he woke up screaming, moaning that there were spiders. He kept looking around, so fearful; poor thing! We tried to calm him and explain that there were no spiders, that it was just a bad dream. But I guess it was too real, and he just couldn’t comprehend it at the moment.
He adamantly declared that he was not going back to bed. Kwasi was going to get up with him, take him to the living room, but Kwabena insisted that Mommy was going to get up, too. He took my hand and pulled me to the darkened living room. We gave him a Welch’s fruit snack pack, and he sat on the sofa and quickly gobbled down the pieces while we sat on the sofa.
Afterwards I tried to get him to go back to our bed, but he wanted to sleep in his own bed. I knew it was too good to be true to expect him to go back to bed on his own. Wouldn’t you know it, 2 minutes later he was crying out for me. I proceeded to stand by the side of his loft bed for a good 15 minutes or more, holding his hand, while he started wide out at me, with occasional heavy blinks of his eyelids, a give-away that he was exhausted, too.
I finally had to offer to lie down on the bottom mattress with him. I know he was awake for a good 1.5 hours altogether, because I kept dozing and would wake up to him fighting sleep next to me.
About 5:30 a.m. I snuck out of his room, leaving him to sleep on his own, and nursing my aching shoulder from partially lying on a crib mattress five sizes too small.
Tonight he didn’t want me to leave his room; insisted I stay and rock him in the glider for a few minutes, and then not wanting to stay in his bed, or to release my hand. I finally offered to allow him to keep his shelf lamp on. Surprisingly, it didn’t interfere with his sleep; he fell asleep in 10-15 minutes.
WHEW!
Nightmares suck.
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