Sadie has been having night terrors for the last four months. They have gotten increasingly more intense and more frequent. I worried a little the first time it happened and then a little more and now I am ordering books and talking to people about it.
The first time it happened I recall thinking that my husband and I had watched the movie "The Exorcist" too many times. Sadie stumbled in to our bedroom not awake but not asleep either screaming and crying and shaking and cold. This is not good, I thought. Gary sat up pie eyed not knowing what to do.
She hadn't recalled the event the next day and she didn't have one for some time after that one incident. We forgot about it.
It happened again, this time her bed was shaking with her in it while she cried and screamed. Ok, serious Exorcist problem now.
Gary and I stayed up all night long looking at her and convincing each other that we were whacked.
For the last couple of weeks it has become a two to three times a week kind of occurance. Most of the time she ends up in our room, sometimes she wanders around the house confused and scared.
What does this all mean?
My good friend Patricia told me that she is probably reacted to John's illness. That could be, it had never dawned on me that those two things could be related (great therapist I am).
Last night when she woke up she was inconsolable for about twenty minutes and then settled down. The funniest part is that she never wants to sleep with us after these events. She likes to crawl in with us in the middle of the night unrelated to the night terrors but when it is a night terror event once she is alert she wants to go back to sleep as if this event and these feelings are so buried in her they are hard to recall during waking time.
I talked with her today about it. We went into her closet and hid away from everyone and sat and talked. I realized how guarded she can be, how much she wants to keep her feelings at bay. This worries me. She always says she is fine,even when I know she is not fine.
She told me she remembers that sometimes she is dreaming about death and that someone is killing her. I thought about that a lot today. I thought about the fact that for many minutes every other day my seven year old gets killed in her head and there is nothing I can do but sit here and reassure her and talk with her.
I have had night terrors too. I guess they run in families. I guess that Sadie will inherit some of my anxieties and worry. I remember waking up in such agony and fear that I had to have Gary turn on all the lights and talk with me until the early morning.
We decided we would not read "A Wrinkle in Time" before bed anymore and we would drink milk and tell funny stories at bedtime instead.