Nightmares...

KB has always been a light sleeper.  Even as an infant I have had to deal with sleepless nights with him.  Even when he was just born he looked so alert and so deep in thought.  He continues to be that way.  But the last few months have not been just those random wake up for a few minutes, talking in his sleep or whining a little and going back to sleep. KB wakes up around 10.45 p.m. (he goes to sleep around 9.00 p.m.) crying in his sleep.  He gets up half asleep and kneels down and keeps bending down and putting his head on the pillow as if he was doing a namaz prayer and cries out "Mamma! Daddy"...and says "Help me" or just keeps calling out for us while crying "Mamma...Mamma..."  The first time he had this kind of petrified look, I traced it back to the combination of medications he took for his Bronchitis.  But the last couple of months, he did not take any medications. I made him sleep in our bed (and later move him to his bed) - that worked for about three weeks.  So I thought something about his bed made him get nightmares.  But I jinxed it.  He got nightmares on random days.

I am very sensitive to the temperature in the room.  If it gets too hot, especially on those days in winter when we turn on the heater and  if it is a little too much, I end up getting nightmares.  Even if feel sleepy and lazy I would wake up and turn down the heat.  KB seems exactly the same way.  But the temperature is not the only thing.  It is a combination of his age, the stage of development when they understand more, imagine more and hence get these nightmares.  But it is also his particular nature.  Intense, compulsive, particular about how things are done, thinks very deeply about things.  I will write more about his nature in his birthday post next month. He is totally into "Calvin and Hobbes" comics these days.  He reads them on his own but we read it to him before bedtime.  Even though it is not scary, it has some food for thought in its content.  So KB ends up thinking about things like "Why did his racoon die?" etc while going to bed (I think!).  Anyway - one thing that helps to calm him down and get him back to sleep is getting a cold towel and rubbing his back and forehead with it.  The whole process takes about fifteen minutes.  It wasn't this bad until the last couple of months.  Of late it has been about three times a week that this happens.  May be the heat of the summer also contributes to it.  But it is very stressful for me sometimes - the anticipation that he might wake up crying, then trying to calm him down and getting him back to sleep.  I just hope he gets through this phase and gets back to sleeping peacefully through the night.