If someone was to ask me what the most difficult and
harrowing experience of parenthood has been thus far, I won't have to think
long about an answer. Top of the list as far as I'm concerned was transitioning
Ellie to sleeping in her crib instead of sleeping in her swing. Seriously, it
was the stuff of nightmares. For Ellie, her crib was not a place of rest.
Instead, it was seemingly a place of abandonment and despair. A place where she
was destined to reside alone for an indeterminate amount of time. Of course,
that was partly true because of #ToughLove. While those difficulties we faced
eventually subsided, we now find Ellie is suffering from a nightmare of a
different kind.
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| 'Cause this is thriller, thriller night... |
As you likely know, Ellie is a very routined little girl.
The rundown of her night is pretty much in place at this point. Dinner,
playtime, bath, bed. Rinse and repeat, night after night. She's reached the
point where we only have to put her down and then we really don't hear a peep
out of her until between 5 and 6 am the next morning. At least that's been the
case until recently.
You see, poor Ellie has fallen prey to a form of night
terrors as of late. At least that's what Bethany and I are choosing to refer to
it as. We don't really have the formal training required to diagnose something
like that. Our reasons for calling it a night terror are very simple though.
The first night we heard poor little Ellie screaming her
heart out during the night, we did what we always do. That is, we set an
internal timer for five minutes and would rescue her after that time passed.
More often than not, she actually gives up (or finds a pacifier) after a few
minutes meaning I don't have to drag my tired self out of bed. Unfortunately,
that was not to be the case on this occasion.
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| Me when I have to drag myself out of bed... |
After five minutes, I got up and wandered into Ellie's room
to provide assistance. I fully expected to find my daughter standing at the
edge of the crib watching the door intently. Instead, I found her lying down in
her crib, eyes closed, screaming at the top of her lungs. Not only that, but
she was completely asleep as well. I first began talking to her with no
noticeable effect. Then I gently placed my hand on her tiny chest and began
rubbing it. Finally, I plucked a pacifier off the floor and plopped it into her
mouth. After all of that, imagine my shock when she continued screaming.
As she was definitively asleep and had no clue what she was
doing, I finally decided to leave the room, hoping she would calm shortly thereafter.
Luckily for me, she did just that a couple of minutes later. I wish I could say this
has only happened once, but it's quickly turning into a common occurrence. The
weirdest part is that she never even awakes from her slumber.
Bethany and I were absolutely ecstatic when Ellie went two
nights in a row without said screaming fit. However, I should have known it was
too good to last as it started up again last night. The one thing that eases
our minds is that Ellie never seems the worse for wear after one of these
events.
Unfortunately for us, we can't say the same. Not only is it
hard to hear your child scream her little heart out over nothing but it makes
it pretty hard to fall back asleep yourself. I guess, at least, we're not
suffering through the same nightmares that seem to plague Ellie. Assuming that
it's nightmares, that is. #DaddyWrite
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