Dream Weaver
Do babies dream? Do they have nightmares? If they do, what is it that they find scary, given that they know no fear? If they don't, then what else is it that wakes Anna from a deep sleep to an hysterical scream in 0.4 seconds in the wee small hours, and then renders it near impossible to settle her again?
Of course, I don't know for sure that she goes from deep sleep to scream, maybe she lies there awake for a while. The thought of that is, somehow, even worse. Something's going on though, because normally when she wakes at night she starts off with a low grade grizzle and it will only escalate if I am slack and pushing my luck, lying in bed hoping she'll go back to sleep again. (Why do we do this? I know I am not the only parent who lies awake, making futile deals with any random God who may be tuning in, hoping against all hope – not to mention previous experience – that the crying will magically stop and we won't need to get out of bed. It's the Lotto mentality – everyone knows the odds of winning are impossibly long, but we all play anyway. And, hey, our dreams will come true – sometime between birth and 18 years, a child will stop calling out in the night. They'll stop calling out for us, anyway. Geez Louise, I really hope I have a blokie on board by then, someone who will be willing to prowl around with a bright torch and a defensive attitude, protecting the virtue of his daughter. I am not sure that I am up to the task, mainly because I discarded my own virtue so lightly I don't think I could stand the hypocrisy).
Anyway. Back to dreaming. Anna's Uncle was a chronic sleepwalker and a nightmare sufferer, so maybe these sorts of things are hereditary. If that's the case I will be calling for a total ban on all things sharp and pointy in her room, our family having almost learnt a terrible lesson involving a somnambulant 15 year old boy in the grip of a bad nightmare, a fully loaded gidgee gun, and my not particularly skinny mother trying to calmly talk him down but in the process presenting an impossible-to-miss target. I know this because I was hiding behind the door at the time, simultaneously hissing at my mother to get the hell out of the room, writing her eulogy in my head, and idly wondering in my spare time if "I was asleep at the time, Your Honour" was a good enough plea to escape a 1st degree murder charge. (Thankfully, we never had the chance to find out. My mother is alive and well, and my brother… well, I don't sleep in the same house as him any more, so as far as I'm concerned everything is peachy!)
Nightmares suck. The last lot I had, all hormonally induced, were while I was pregnant and I had various horrible scenarios of losing the dog (I don't need to be Freud to realise there were possible projection issues going on there) and then again right after Anna's birth, when the scene changed slightly to include various people stealing Anna, no doubt related to the signs pasted on every available surface at hospital about not letting your babes be handled by anyone not wearing an I.D. tag. Good advice, probably, but not really the sort of thing that will calm the frayed nerves of the newly-delivered. Before that, I had a cool (cool in a horror can't-watch-but-can't-look-away movie kind of way) bout of nightmares during my trip to Africa, which were brought on by the anti-malarial drug Lariam, only issued after all kinds of bleak warnings about it being known to ward off disease-carrying mosquitos but also not adverse to bringing on nightmares, hallucinations and, for the particularly lucky, psychosis.
All this might make for interesting reminiscing but it doesn't help me when, at 3am, I am trying to comfort a 9 month old with zero language skills by explaining that whatever she is crying about isn't really real, and why doesn't she calm down and come have some nice, warm, sleepy mummy milk? Strangely enough, she doesn't want to hear it.
Of course, I don't know for sure that she goes from deep sleep to scream, maybe she lies there awake for a while. The thought of that is, somehow, even worse. Something's going on though, because normally when she wakes at night she starts off with a low grade grizzle and it will only escalate if I am slack and pushing my luck, lying in bed hoping she'll go back to sleep again. (Why do we do this? I know I am not the only parent who lies awake, making futile deals with any random God who may be tuning in, hoping against all hope – not to mention previous experience – that the crying will magically stop and we won't need to get out of bed. It's the Lotto mentality – everyone knows the odds of winning are impossibly long, but we all play anyway. And, hey, our dreams will come true – sometime between birth and 18 years, a child will stop calling out in the night. They'll stop calling out for us, anyway. Geez Louise, I really hope I have a blokie on board by then, someone who will be willing to prowl around with a bright torch and a defensive attitude, protecting the virtue of his daughter. I am not sure that I am up to the task, mainly because I discarded my own virtue so lightly I don't think I could stand the hypocrisy).
Anyway. Back to dreaming. Anna's Uncle was a chronic sleepwalker and a nightmare sufferer, so maybe these sorts of things are hereditary. If that's the case I will be calling for a total ban on all things sharp and pointy in her room, our family having almost learnt a terrible lesson involving a somnambulant 15 year old boy in the grip of a bad nightmare, a fully loaded gidgee gun, and my not particularly skinny mother trying to calmly talk him down but in the process presenting an impossible-to-miss target. I know this because I was hiding behind the door at the time, simultaneously hissing at my mother to get the hell out of the room, writing her eulogy in my head, and idly wondering in my spare time if "I was asleep at the time, Your Honour" was a good enough plea to escape a 1st degree murder charge. (Thankfully, we never had the chance to find out. My mother is alive and well, and my brother… well, I don't sleep in the same house as him any more, so as far as I'm concerned everything is peachy!)
Nightmares suck. The last lot I had, all hormonally induced, were while I was pregnant and I had various horrible scenarios of losing the dog (I don't need to be Freud to realise there were possible projection issues going on there) and then again right after Anna's birth, when the scene changed slightly to include various people stealing Anna, no doubt related to the signs pasted on every available surface at hospital about not letting your babes be handled by anyone not wearing an I.D. tag. Good advice, probably, but not really the sort of thing that will calm the frayed nerves of the newly-delivered. Before that, I had a cool (cool in a horror can't-watch-but-can't-look-away movie kind of way) bout of nightmares during my trip to Africa, which were brought on by the anti-malarial drug Lariam, only issued after all kinds of bleak warnings about it being known to ward off disease-carrying mosquitos but also not adverse to bringing on nightmares, hallucinations and, for the particularly lucky, psychosis.
All this might make for interesting reminiscing but it doesn't help me when, at 3am, I am trying to comfort a 9 month old with zero language skills by explaining that whatever she is crying about isn't really real, and why doesn't she calm down and come have some nice, warm, sleepy mummy milk? Strangely enough, she doesn't want to hear it.
posted by Helen at 8:57 pm
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