I’ve been alone in bed the last couple of nights because my husband has a cold and is in the guest bedroom, so it’s just me and the baby monitor. Last night around 1:15 I heard Ciaran shuffling around in his bed, a few thumps, and nothing more. I needed a trip to the loo anyway, so got up and went, then headed into his bedroom to make sure that he’d settled back down (he’s had a cold too, poor guy). Initial pat around the pillow = no Ciaran
My sleep-dazed mind took a moment to assimilate this and then thought, quite logically, Oh, right, he’s probably gone into my bed while I was in the bathroom. I went back in to check in my bed. No Ciaran.
A little more worried but hey, Graham’s in the guest bedroom, so clearly Ciaran’s gone there. I go in and look. No Ciaran.
Panic.
My brain was still too sleepy to make much sense of this but I tried to find a flashlight for a couple of minutes, so that I wouldn’t wake him up when I found him. I hadn’t checked the foot of his bed, so maybe he was there. Was he on the sofa? My sister helped me clean this weekend and a few things (like, apparently, flashlights) weren’t where I remembered them being. Finally fear won out and I just turned on all the lights and hurried from bedroom to bedroom. No Ciaran.
Graham didn’t wake up the first time I shouted at him that Ciaran was NOT in his bed. He did the second time and was up like a shot. We were both panicking as I tried my last resort, going upstairs to see if he’d somehow blundered up to my parents’ space. I think my voice was calm as I called for him.
My dad answered. “He’s with us. He’s asleep.”
I couldn’t sleep for an hour afterward, thanks to the adrenaline and pounding heart. He’s never gone upstairs like that in the night, so for a long couple of minutes I thought he could be gone. I went from sleep-haziness to the sudden shock of gritty, terrible, very real fear almost instantly. LogicalMe knew that I still needed to check upstairs but underneath the frantic, screaming MotherBeast was ready to tear the house apart to find my child. A scared voice that’s watched too many crime programs was also whispering in the back of my head They’re going to blame you! They always look at the mother first!
If something were to happen to my child, I’m quite sure it would be MotherBeast who won, and not LogicalMe. I have never been so scared in my life, except in those very first few moments when his body was finally outside of my own, they were giving him oxygen, and I thought he might die. Even that, though, was nothing in comparison with the gut-wrenching terror at the thought of losing the little boy that, even on his worst days, fills my heart with joy. I cannot imagine life without him and even now that I know he’s safe and happy (he was quite pleased with his accomplishment – “I woke up and I went upstairs and I went to Noni and Baba’s bed! It was a treat for my! It was my treat!”), little frissons of remembered fear keep gripping me.
My nine year old, with whom we went through nightly sleep terrors back when he was four, still tends to get up and sleepwalk downstairs, or into our bedroom, and sometimes talks to us while clearly still asleep, not making any sense at all and sometimes being very spooky about it as we usher him back into bed.
He sleeps in the top of a bunk and I always freak out a little at the thought of him going down the ladder and sometimes down the stairs while out of it, but he seems to manage and has no memory of it when he wakes up.
So yes, kids do find interesting ways to make our hearts beat a little faster!
Aw crap. I hate it when I lose a comment, because I don’t know whether to retype or give up.
I basically said I really, really feel for you. I was — blessed, I guess — with two very incurious, quiet children. And while I work like crazy trying to convince them that they have to take the world by the balls and shake it until it gives them what they want, they still tend to be easygoing and passive and whatever (they take after their mother that way). I have many friends, though, with the other type of kid. The kind whose first reaction on seeing something new is to try to break it to look inside; who stand up and run way over there before you can get your feet under you; who see that you put the cookies on the top shelf and as soon as you turn your back start stacking boxes on top of chairs. Those kids will rule the world when they grow up, but they could easily kill their mothers in the process.
He’s fine. And you’re awesome mommy.
Having a child is the scariest thing in the world. The very thought of anything happening to either of my children puts me into an adrenaline rush that keeps me awake and imagining worse and worse things far too long. I freak myself out. If I think about it too much any time they go off to school or are not with me I’m always a teensy-tiny bit afraid. Now that I’ve lived life WITH them, I can’t imagine ever living life WITHOUT them. I can’t fathom how mother’s go one after losing a child, though I understand that they have to. It’s moments like the one you experience which just bring that fear to the front. Glad everything was fine and he enjoyed his “special treat” but I feel for you. I really do!
“Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” Elizabeth Stone
She’s so right. And along with that come moments of sheer *terror.* Logan pulled one of those stunts on me before he was a year old, climbing into the shelves of his changing table and thereby “disappearing” out of his bedroom, which had a window overlooking the cul-de-sac we lived on. I don’t know how many visions of kidnappers grabbing him out of his crib I had in the moments before I verified that the window was still locked, and he made some small noise in his sleep that drew my attention to where he was curled up on top of his clothes.
Oy. Vey.
I feel your terror. It’s just not even…Yeah. I get it.
I need to go suck my thumb and rock in a corner now.