Baby Dreams

Today Russell asked his little brother, who has been married for 7 weeks, if he is married in his dreams yet. It made me think about how dreams evolve to include new people in your life, and how this has especially affected my dreams as a new mother.

The dreams I am talking about are different than regular REM dreams...they are more like hallucinations. Like, my sister Carol often has spider hallucinations in the night. She opens her eyes and sees spiders coming down at her from the ceiling, or across the pillow, or some other terrifying scenario. She has to get up and turn on the light before she can convince herself they aren't real. I have experienced this with spiders as well, although I am usually tired enough that I can turn over and sleep with the spiders in peace.

But now that I am a mom, I have baby hallucinations in the night. In the early weeks of Dorian's life, I occasionally resorted to bringing him into my bed in my sleep deprived state. This is not meant to be a discussion on co-sleeping, because I know it works great for some people, but it is not for me. Because for months after I did this a few times, I woke up EVERY NIGHT with the absolute knowledge that the baby was in bed with me. I would shove Russell away because he was on top of the baby, or I would claw through the bedclothes, trying to find the baby before he suffocated. Often I could even feel him breathing under the covers, but then he wasn't there. After a few minutes of looking, I would remember that I had put the baby in his crib after the last time he ate, and then I could go back to sleep.

The hallucinations were like that for several months. But after Dorian started crawling, they eventually evolved. Rather than being under the covers or under Russell, the baby was falling off the edge of the bed, and I had to catch him. Later, as he became more independent, I would wake up because he was in the room, playing in the garbage can, or about to pull the iron down on top of himself. Once, after he started pulling himself up to a standing position in his crib, I woke up to hear him falling down the stairs. Russell and Dorian woke up that time too; I think there must have been a loud noise outside. The next day, Russell lowered the crib mattress as far as it would go.

Now that Dorian has been walking for a couple of months, the hallucinations usually involve him being out in the living room, which doesn't frighten me as much because it is pretty well baby-proofed, but it does make me think I should get up and watch my child. I have often found myself out of bed, walking into the living room, before I again remember that the kiddo is in his crib, and I should be sleeping too.

Last night I awoke no less than 4 times to the kiddo climbing up on a chair and pulling it over onto himself, or falling down the stairs (we had them blocked for months, but have opened them up because he can handle them pretty well now), or other similar catastrophes. Each time I sat completely upright with a gasp, or even jumped out of bed. So...it doesn't seem to be going away, or getting better. And it still happens almost every night.