Mistaken identity

We are lucky that the girls are sleeping a fair amount these days, including a full night and two daytime naps.  Pretty luxurious, and a relief from the challenges of getting them adjusted to the time difference.

I am finding that I do not sleep nearly as deeply as I did before, and that my dreams have become much more vivid and peculiar.  This was probably most pronounced during the height of sleep deprivation.  This week I had an odd dream that I was meeting with some colleagues from the ombudsman professional association, in my old high school, when there was a terrible hail storm (by coincidence, a town in New Mexico got 1 foot of hail last night, which is approximately the magnitude of the storm in my dream).  In my dream all of the ice on the roof became an avalanche and crashed down onto a lower part of the school.  People were panicked and I was calm until I realized the girls were in a daycare below.  Anyway, it turns out they were fine in my dream and in real life.

Even stranger than the dream was a sleepwalking incident that happened last week.  We have not been sleeping with the girls in our bed at all.  Our pediatrician feels strongly about not doing so at their age, but we had not planned on it anyway.  Probably based on the physician's words, I had it in my mind that it would be really bad to have the girls in our bed, so I have woken up a couple of times really worried that Stacey might have put one or both in the bed.

I had this feeling last week and sat up to feel around to make sure neither girl was in the bed with us.  I even stood up and walked beside the bed to check.  Now, although we do not co-sleep with our daughters, Maggie actually does sleep at the foot of our bed.  As I was feeling around I ran my hand along Maggie's head and thought it must be one of the girl's thick, curly hair.  I did think it seemed a bit long as I felt her long ears.  Then I touched Maggie's leg and to continue to justify my experience decided that Clara or Lucia must have on a really soft sweater.  Maybe it's when I reached her paws that reality set in that it was the pooch.

It was so bizarre.  I have had other times in the past when I have sleep walked, but it has been a long time and it always worries me that I could do something like stand up next to the bed and convince myself that the dog is one of the girls.

It's also interesting to think about what things stick in my head as dire warnings.  I wouldn't have thought about the co-sleeping comment again, but it was obviously something that stayed with me.