(no subject)

[rivka]

At 4:15am, Michael jumped up, dragging me out of a dream after him. Then I heard it too: Alex wailing upstairs. Mysteriously, no sound was coming out of the baby monitor that I know I turned up at bedtime. No idea how long she'd been crying before we heard it over the air conditioner.

"She's wet herself," Michael said as we stumbled out of the bedroom. It was the first night we'd given in to her request to sleep in underpants. And as we came into her room, that was what indeed she seemed to be saying through her sobs.

I picked her up. She felt dry, so I hustled her downstairs to the bathroom while she continued to cry hard. I reassured her that she was okay, that we were there, as I sat her on the potty. Michael came down and reported that her bed was also dry.

She broke off her sobs to say, "Mama, are you dressed?" No. "You need to get dressed!"

"I'm busy taking care of you right now, honey."

"There was a snake in my crib," she said abruptly.

"A snake? Oh, that sounds so, so scary."

"Scary," she agreed. She finished up on the potty and I carried her back upstairs, telling her that it was still nighttime, time to go back to bed.

"No, there's a snake!"

"Papa checked your bed, and nothing's in there. You had a bad dream."

She went into the crib willingly. I started the lullabye CD, found her pacifier, stroked her hair. Because she seemed so calm, I went downstairs to use the bathroom myself. Then she started to cry. I went back upstairs to find her huddled in a crouch, on her pillow.

"There's a snake! A snake right there!" She pointed at a wrinkle in her sheet.

I picked her up and sat down in the rocker, and we rocked. Rocked until her breathing slowed and her death grip on my arm loosened and her eyes closed. I slipped her into bed after about 45 minutes, went downstairs, climbed into my own bed, and immediately heard some whimpering and a "Mama!"

Back out of bed, stumbling in the dark. I sat down on the steps to listen. Silence. After about five minutes, I went back to bed, noticing that it was starting to get light outside, and fell into an uneasy sleep.

This morning she remembered: "There was a snake in my bed." We explained a little more about the nature of dreams. I'm sure she's had bad dreams before, but this is the first time she's ever been able to explain her experience.

Poor kid. Poor Mama.

Comments

[malibrarian.livejournal.com]

Sarah's been scared to go to bed a few times lately because she's been getting chased in her dreams by things that are bigger than the earth. I did inform her that mommy and daddy were available during these periods for comfort and she said that she was scared to go get us. Ha, she got over that fear that very night and I spent 45 minutes next to her bed. Dad got the next night and she's been fine ever since then.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

No fun at all.

[livi-short.livejournal.com]

My youngest daughter used to have regular nightmares after my ex let her watch a horror film at the age of three (let's just say that agree that it is a good job he is my ex and that I'm not in prison for murder).

I read somewhere that you can actually influence what your child dreams about. I'll try and explain here what I did.

When your Mouse had just entered sleep mode at the stage before the rapid eye movements (REM) she will still be aware of her surroundings and slightly responsive if you question her. During this stage I would tell her a story about something friendly but unique (we had purple elephants with pink spots). Make it a very silly friendly story, something that she wouldn't come up with herself.

In the mornings I would ask her about her dreams. It took a few tries but after while she would talk about the purple elephant with pink spots.

I know it can be a lot of extra effort at bed time, and at first you may actually wake her up, so it is not something to try when you are tired or it may back fire, but it did work for me.

Also the dream may have been her body trying to wake her up to go to the toilet to prevent wetting the bed...

I also used to have a trick to mimise wet beds. The girls would go to bed about 7 o'clock and I would go between ten and eleven. When I went up i would go to each of the girls and gentle ask them if they needed the toilet (but not if they were in REM mode) they often murmered a response.

If they agreed i would take them out of bed and gently talk to them as I took them to the toilet, they kind of wake up but not fully so when you put them back to bed they go straight back to sleep.

If they don't repond or murmer a response i always asked them again. If they gave a firm no then i left them alone.

I know all children are different but this did work for both my daughters and i very rarely had to clean up a wet bed.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Aw... yes, poor you(plural). (Is it weird to feel grateful to a woman for being a good mom to her daughter?)

You may, or may not - you probably know better than I - want to explain that sometimes we see things late at night, when we're tired and scared, that *look* real, but aren't, really, and truly.

For many years I thought that a small frog had bitten (well, "mouthed") me that lived in the drain of my grandmother's tub. I later realized that it was the water swirling and sucking at my finger, the small (tight!) whirlpool reflecting light differently as lengthened, and a lot of imagination. But I *remembered* seeing the tiny head and the mouth closing on my finger. It wasn't scary, just very weird. (It also might have been a dream, I suppose. But, as I said, it was a dream that I was sure happened until I grew old enough to both remember it and reality-check it.)

So, who knows? Maybe she distinctly remembers *seeing* a snake, when she saw the wrinkle.

Or, maybe it won't matter. Maybe some time from now, you'll hear her telling a playmate about the time there was a snake in her bed until mommy and daddy threw it out the window.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Also the dream may have been her body trying to wake her up to go to the toilet to prevent wetting the bed...

Or anxiety about the possibility of wetting the bed, yeah. I think it was probably related to that. Funny, because she's been dry at night with the last three weeks of diaper wearing.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

For a long time, I had the theory that my extended bed-wetting might have been exacerbated by my parents' habit of taking everybody for "midnight pee" without being fully awakened. I think I read something consistent with that in a parenting book at the time, and I asked my parents to stop. Dunno if it helped, though. (Precocious reader, late bed-wetter).