We have kids in diapers. The first week after the boy was born, my wife woke up, got out of bed, and started tossing the sheets around saying “Where is he?” I told her he was asleep in the crib in the other room.
A year later, I dove across my sleeping wife to catch the falling child, myself falling onto the floor and bruising my shoulder. Once again, the baby was in the other room, sound asleep.
Just last night, I shouted “Where did we leave him? Where is the baby?” As you guessed, it’s about 1 a.m. and the baby is of course in the crib, in no danger whatsoever.
These are just three instances of what has become a biweekly/monthly thing for us. It’s so regular now that we just say something like “He’s in the crib. It’s night time, you’re dreaming. Go back to sleep.”
Is this common, or are we weird? How many of you suddenly wake up to “rescue” your child from phantom falls, nonexistent predators, and other imagined distress? Tell me your best story, and tell me when this habit ends.
All the time. Adding to the chaos, one of our dogs sleeps in the bed, and is roughly the size of a 9-12 month old child. Do you know how many times I’ve “saved” her from falling off the side of the bed? It’s far more than I care to admit.
yes, I think it is probably common. My Daddy radar went off about every 5 seconds when kidlets started to go mobile, to 10 seconds to 30 seconds, etc. I have a child on the autism spectrum that used to bolt off or do a runner from about when she could finally walk until about age 10. If I didn’t have her in line of sight within say 30 seconds, Papa Bear alarms would go off until I found her. And it was not a rare occurrence when she had bolted. Double points for being anywhere near water. Holy crap, it took maybe 10 seconds for her to think it was a good idea to jump into the ocean, lake or pool. She would, maybe, just maybe, stop if called on it within the 10 second jump clock, but no guarantees. With her, it was a decade of anything more than about 30 seconds I had to find line of sight.
Thankfully, now at 12 years old, with greatly improved verbal skills, we haven’t had her do a runner for about 2 years. Sometimes, I’ll even leave her at home alone for as much as 15 minutes.
Every morning I wake up and scream at her to accept Born Again Protestant Jesus. She responds with “milk, daddy?” and gets a diaper change. No change, yet.
I could have written the OP, except I’m the lone offender in my household. My husband has to put up with this craziness from me on a monthly basis.
A week ago, I had the most dramatic incident. Can’t remember what was in my head in the moment, but it was a sense of urgency and alarm strong enough to launch me out of bed, with my body hitting the floor all the way down at the foot of the bed. I landed on my hands and knees. Knee is still sore. It will prob happen again.
Well, I’ll be the odd poster out to say it hasn’t happened to me yet (two daughters, ages 3 and 1.) For that matter, I don’t really dream much about my real personal life.
My mom tells of one night when I was a baby (I think maybe 6 months old?). It had been a nice warm evening, so they’d left the windows open, but apparently the temperature dropped a lot overnight. Mom woke up in the middle of the night because she had to pee, and checked on me while she was up… while I was already turning blue from hypothermia. If it weren’t for Mom’s tiny bladder, I probably wouldn’t be here today.
It sounds to me like your dreams might be more frequent than most, but yes, it is definitely something that happens to parents.
I once dreamed that I went to a rocky seashore with my son (then around 4), turned my back for just a brief moment, and he was … gone. I spent the rest of the dream desperately calling his name, knowing he must have been swept out to sea but hoping against hope I would somehow find him. What a relief to wake up and realize it was only a dream. To this day, the sick feeling I had in the pit of my stomach remains exceptionally vivid. (Son is 19 now.)
Thirty-five years ago, we raised a number of baby parrots, hand fed them, until they were adults. At no time did they ever leave the nesting area we had for them.
To this day, about twice a year, I have dreams that the baby parrots are in my bed, and I have to save them from falling off the edge.
I’m childless, but I used to own three pugs. They’ve been dead and gone for many years, but I still regularly dream that they’re getting into peril. Typically, I’m trying to walk them but I have no leashes, and they’re running about and getting into traffic or threatened by big dogs. I go apeshit trying to catch them all and hold them up out of harm’s way. Then I wake up.