'A night terror comes to me every evening at the same time'

 

A night terror comes to me every evening, at the same time.

 

This night terror is four and no longer wishes to spend the whole night in her own bed... my daughter is depleting my brain cells, one broken night of sleep at a time.

 

The problem started on our camping holiday in France whereby the child became accustomed to sharing a tent with one of us - whoever had gotten the shortest straw.

 

She rediscovered the joy of snuggling up, of wriggling next to someone, of waking in the middle of the night and whispering questions to a sleepy, grumpy parent.

 

And she has continued the terrible quest for night time chats and cuddles since our return. 

 

 

Sometimes, as my brain is so well trained, I wake a second or two before her and think, oh good, she hasn’t woken up tonight. 

 

Then I hear her start to call: "Mum, Mum, Muuuuuuuuum" into the inky darkness of the night.

 

I stagger over my partner’s snoring corpse-like body. His super power is the dad-ability to sleep through all night time incidents—illness, vomiting, nightmares, crying—it all passes him by.

 

For the first week I stumbled into her room, lifted her up and brought her back to bed out of the sheer overpowering desire to fall back to sleep as quickly as possible. 

 

Then I rediscovered the hell of small children shoving you endlessly off your pillow, off the bed, the agony of waking to a crick in the neck from desperately trying to cling onto the edge of the mattress all night.

 

So I am currently retraining us, going to her, firmly restating that she must stay in her own bed. 

 

Then I get persuaded to wait with her a little while. I lie on the floor and pull a few stray teddies over me for warmth. 

 

Sometimes I fall asleep and wake, cold, with a crick in the neck.

 

My brain has turned to Weetabix mush. She doesn’t seem tired at all.