Few things are as chilling as your partner sitting up suddenly in bed in the middle of the night, eyes wide open, speaking in tongues for a few minutes, then plopping back down on the pillow to continue sawing logs as though nothing has happened. You're left staring down at them in fear and incredulity and you debate whether or not you should lock yourself in another room until morning comes so that you can have the comforting help of daylight when you assess whether they have or have not been possessed by a satanic spirit, à la Linda Blair.
As it turns out, Andrew and I both have really creepy sleeping habits. From talking to walking to odd gutteral grunting, tongue clicking, crying, and screaming, the two of us together are the super duo of fucked-up slumber. Initially, we both thought I was the only one with sleep issues. I frequently woke him up with frantic incoherent babbling or crisply delivered orders such as "Get it out of here!," causing him to leap to his feet so he could confront, in all of his bare-bellied glory, whatever was causing me to freak out. Much like Pavlov's dogs, Andrew gradually stopped taking the bait and is presently capable of sleeping through Brooklyn's toy xylophone being played in his ear (not that I've tried that or anything...heh).
Andrew has his own little sleep issue that made its debut appearance the night I went into labor with Brooklyn (methinks I'll have to repost that story from my old myspace blog...). Since that night, it has only become more apparent. Some mornings I wake up to an empty bed and find Andrew snore-choking (his own special brand of snoring) on the living room couch, and I wonder if he was mad at me for something. In actuality, he'll have zero recollection of leaving bed, while I'm left worrying about what else he does in his mobile sleep. I would love to attribute the cat-litter-strewn bathroom or the messy kitchen to some of his sleepwalking activities, but- ahem- that wouldn't be giving credit where credit is due...to our shit-factory cats and eating-machine selves, respectively. Thankfully, most signs point to harmless wandering to & fro between the couch and the bed, but there was one instance that sent shivers up my spine...
Brooklyn must have been less than a month old, possibly only days-old. It was the middle of the night and she was awake. My body was racked with exhaustion and after an hour of rocking and nursing her, I found myself weak and unable to keep my eyes open. It took five minutes of constant shaking and prodding to get Andrew to wake up, but once he awoke he was standing, eyes open, reaching for the baby so I could get some rest. I handed Brooklyn over, clicked off my nightstand light, and slumped back into my pillows, exhaling deeply, welcoming the sleep I so desperately needed...except, oddly, sleep wouldn't come. Chalking it up to being over-tired, I tugged the covers tighter around my shoulders and tried to relax, but this nagging feeling was making me uneasy.
My eyes struggled to focus in the dark as they searched for Andrew's form, but they eventually found him at the foot of the bed. His sillhouette swayed back-and-forth and on first glance it looked like he was lightly rocking our infant daughter to sleep. But as my eyes further adjusted to the dark, I noticed something funny about his stance. Rather than snuggling her close to his chest as he usually did, he was holding Brooklyn away from his body, as though his arms had locked up when I had handed her to him. I squinted up at his face, but couldn't see it, so I switched my nightstand light back on. An icy jolt of terror shot through my veins before escaping through my skin in thousands of hair-standing goosebumps. Through glazed-over, heavy-lidded eyes, Andrew was staring at me--rather, through me--and was shifting from one foot to the other, Brooklyn swaying lightly in his outstretched arms. He smacked his lips groggily.
*smack* *smack* *smack*
My husband looked like a brain-eating, baby-toting zombie.
My motherly instincts instantly snapped on and I snatched my oblivious infant daughter from the precarious grasp of this creature of the living dead. This sudden action on my part left him unfazed and he continued his Frankenstein auto-rock dance.
"Andrew ANDREW!"
No response. Just rocking.
"Andrew! Are you awake?" I stupidly asked.
No response. Creepy gaze unabated.
Turning my body so that my daughter would be further away from this Lurch-like creature standing before us, I used my free hand to whack him in the hip.
"WAKE. UP."
Probably not best to try to wake a sleep walker, but I was so freaked out I didn't think about that; I just wanted the psycho-zombie that had staked claim to my husband's body to fuck off and leave the father of my child behind. My rationality at that time posed a frightening example of what chronic sleep deprivation (a hell-blazing zombie in its own right) can do to the mind of a young mother.
The smack snapped Andrew back into wakefulness and, blinking, he held his arms out for me to hand over Brooklyn, completely unaware of his brief period of bedevilment.
"Here honey, I'll rock her to sleep."
Yep. That wasn't going to happen.
I now give Andrew ten minutes to get his bearings before assuming he's awake enough to get out of bed. This still doesn't prevent the weird things he does when he's awake, but it seems to have helped curb some of the sleepwalking.
;-)
Side thought: I'd love to see what Andrew and I look like on the nights we're both sleepwalking/talking at the same time. I imagine him walking into the bedroom wall over and over and over while I'm sitting up in bed, facing the opposite direction, speaking in unintelligible sentences that are sprinkled with gems like "bag the giblets" and "wet that fart!"
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Let's make like a preschooler and share. Post your sleepwalking/talking adventures/ experiences/ horror stories in the comments section! You know you've got 'em!
