A Boy That Goes Bump in the Night

Ryan has always slept very well in his own bed, and has been sleeping in a toddler bed since he 18 months old.  The last few weeks, however, he has woken up several times during the night, not wanting to sleep in his bed.

This all started when he was sick, and had a really high fever.  That was the first time he had a nightmare.  Now it is like every other night, he wakes up from a bad dream, crying, and his heart is pounding. I am not sure what has triggered these dreams, and hope it is just a phase. 

The rest of the times he wakes up, it is like he is sleep-walking.  He’ll talk to us, but not make much sense, and he doesn’t always remember these conversations the next morning. 

A few nights ago, Ryan was waking up about every two hours, and he kept coming in our room, in our bed.  We have a canopy bed that is about 3 1/2 feet off the ground.  He uses the ledge as a step, and will usually climb up into bed on Joe’s side of the bed, and then he wiggles into the middle of the bed.  Joe is a very heavy sleeper, and doesn’t always wake up when Ryan decides to join us.  Most of the time, Ryan will wake up and want to go back in his bed after a while, and then when he wakes up in his bed, he comes back into our bed, and so forth.  To be fair, one night Joe said this happened 3 times, and he got up every time to put Ryan back to bed- evidently I slept right through it!

The other night, I heard him come in the room, and climb up on Joe’s side of the bed.  He didn’t climb over Joe, so he was in the middle- he just turned on his side and fell back to sleep.  He wasn’t right at the edge of the bed, and he was snuggled up to Joe, so I didn’t think anything of it, and fell back to sleep myself.

About an hour later, I woke up to this very loud boom!  I sat up immediately, and tried to figure out what this noise was.  As soon as I looked at the side of the bed, where Ryan was, I noticed he was gone!  Joe was still sleeping, so I climbed over Joe, and looked down on the floor, and there was Ryan curled up on the floor sleeping.  He had obviously rolled out of bed, dropped about 3 1/2 feet onto the floor, and was still sleeping!

I was still kind of half asleep myself, so I poked Joe until he responded and told him Ryan fell out of bed.  Joe wasn’t awake, and just said, “Uh-huh…that’s too bad,” and he was back to sleep.. 

I got out of bed, and went and picked up Ryan.  He was still asleep, and I figured if he was hurt, he wouldn’t have stayed asleep.  So I carried him back into his room, and tucked him back into his bed (about 6 inches off the ground, with a guard rail), where I knew he wouldn’t roll out of bed again.

In the morning, he was fine and I asked him if he remembered falling out of bed.  He said no, so I told him, and Joe (who didn’t remember any of this either), what had happened.  Ryan got a big kick out of it, and now laughs and says, “I rolled right out of your bed, plopped on the floor, and didn’t even wake up.” 

So I am glad he didn’t get hurt, but I hope these night wakings don’t last too much longer.  As a mother, it is hard to relax, and fall into a deep sleep, when you feel you have to keep an ear out for your sleep-walking child.