This is a prequel to the earlier Crisis? What Crisis? post.
What tipped me off to Becoming-A-Mom sleep-searching for Juliette was the couple of prior incidents of other sleep-paranoia actions that have occurred during the past 2 weeks.
At least three times I’ve been awoken to an arm being quickly and firmly thrown over me, pulling me in towards Becoming-A-Mom.
The first time this happened I thought I was having a nightmare – I wasn’t quite awake and not quite asleep either, but I found myself with an arm wrapped around me pulling my face into her breasts.
Normally this would be cause for celebration, except that Becoming-A-Mom was asleep too, and apparently intent on suffocating me rather than initiating a more pleasant activity.
I fought my way free, literally, as every time I removed her arms another would come slapping down in an frantic attempt to keep me from getting away. At some point I woke up completely and realized she was still sleeping, so I started saying loudly, “It’s okay! It’s okay! Relax!”
Eventually she woke up, turned over and went to sleep.
The second and third times were similar, except I was facing away from her and found myself being yanked back towards the middle of the bed. Again, she was asleep or nearly so.
It turns out that she’s having recurring dreams where Juliette is rolling away from her and about to fall out of bed, so she instinctively is reacting and desperately grabbing out to save her baby from this fate. This is a laudable reaction, except for two things:
1) It’s not Juliette falling out of bed, and
2) I’m not falling out of bed either. I’m turning over in my sleep.
I should be happy that she’s looking out for me, but to be quite honest I’d rather just turn over in my sleep and continue sleeping rather than having a quite nasty adrenaline rush from being clubbed and grabbed by her.
Now I feel bad – having written all that, Becoming-A-Mom has stopped by to check on what I’m up to. She’s just showed me the really nasty bruise and cut/bruise she has on her right leg and knee where she fell out of bed the other night… she must have stumbled into her bedside table as well to have gotten the cut. They’re bright pink/red centers surrounded by dark purple bruising, swollen and generally looking painful. And here I am making fun of her.