I think the other night Caroline had what is called a night terror. I had heard about these, but never really experienced one until last Sunday night. She was sleeping between my husband and me in our bed. Out of a sound sleep, I was awoken by screaming and the flailing of 3-year-old limbs. I immediately reached out and patted her as I always do when she cries out, but she was not comforted. She continued to scream.
I tried to wake her and tell her to be quiet. I’m ashamed to say I was actually mad at her b/c I was afraid she was gonna wake Rebecca, and we are doing the horrible CIO thing at the moment (a long story), and I didn’t want to endure that torment. But Caroline was so hysterical that I soon figured out she wasn’t really awake, so I calmed myself and took her downstairs where her screaming wouldn’t wake the baby, and there I was able to get her to settle pretty quickly by talking calmly and rocking her.
When she was no longer screaming and flailing, I instinctively started humming Brahms Lullaby, which I had always used to sing her to sleep when she was an infant. That sparked this horribly sentimental moment in which I was carried back to the nights that I’d sing The Lullaby to her over and over while trying to get her to sleep when she was a baby.
I spent many a night walking the floors of her room in our former home, holding her close, and singing The Lullaby, willing her to go to sleep. Of course when I opened my eyes and looked down in the darkness, I didn’t see that sweet infant but instead found this giant 3-year-old sprawled across my lap. And the warm head that I held against my cheek wasn’t the fuzzy head of a baby, but the curly head of a preschooler. Right there, in the middle of the night, I felt myself start to tear up. Those nights in our old house seem like a lifetime ago.
It was a bittersweet moment because although for now I can still hold her and sing to her, it won’t be too awfully long before she’ll be too big for that at all. Then I realized that as much as I miss those days of holding her as a baby, I love her as a preschooler, and I just have to cling to the hope that as she grows I will continue to love her more at each stage, even when she doesn’t care for me to hold her on my lap and sing The Lullaby anymore.
wowWatch for sleepwalking too.Make sure everything is locked up tight.I had both as a child.I used to sleepwalk and rearrange furniture in my room!Pretty common though so don’t worry too much.
Good to know. Thanks.
My son, almost 12, STILL loves it when I hold him in my lap and pretend he’s a baby!