Nightmares

Is it possible for children to have nightmares? I mean, how is it that Sadie wakes up from a deep sleep crying like the world is lost? A lot of people are going to tell you crazy things like, "Oh, your baby is probably waking up because she's hungry, but I think it's fair to say that the baby is waking up because she's having some crazy ass nightmare."

A simple word search teaches you that the word nightmare came into existence before the advent of English and Germanic languages. And that a mare, French for mother, was the name given to a particular type of female spirit that made it its business to suffocate you at night. Or rather, that particular type of mare was prone to doing so in the evening. Apparently we have a daymare, which seems much more likely to exist given the extent to which naps often leave you feeling worse after you wake up from them.

*I later found some disagreement with the above definition and for those who find those sorts of things interesting here was the most satisfying, ie, most convincing, etymological root of the word nightmare.

"Interestingly, the mare in nightmare has nothing to do with a female horse. Instead, it comes from Old English maere 'goblin, incubus.' The word was nigt-mare in 1300, and it referred to an evil female spirit afflicting sleepers with a feeling of suffocation. By 1350, it was nytmare and in 1440 it was nyghte mare. Mare 'goblin' is a cognate with Middle Dutch mare, maer 'incubus,' Old High German mara, Middle High German mar, mare (dialectical modern German Mahr 'nightmlare'), and Old Icelandic mara 'incubus.' Mare comes from the Proto-Germanic word *maron.

Nightmare was used to describe 'a bad dream caused by an incubus' in the 16th century, and by 1829 it was used to describe 'a bad dream' in general."

One could alternatively suggest that Sadie's crying is due to our having moved her from the newborn napper to a flat-bottomed sleeping position, which she hates. Why? Because it will build character or something. Honestly, I'm sort of confused as to why we made the change. I think the longest distance between two sleeps is letting your child sleep as they desire. However, I've been advised that she needs to learn to sleep in this manner because...well, she does.

I'm given to supporting the child on this one as spending the evenings repose counting sheep in a newborn napper looks positively luxurious, with all the cushy padding and elevated head, just the way those old fancy mattress commercials used to tell us we slept at our best. And, and, it comes with those fancy bears dangling above your head. Remember, it's best to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I'd want those dirty bears where I could keep track of them.

It's now been a solid ten minutes and Sadie has yet to cry out since I put her down, so perhaps she's ready to adjust to this whole sleeping on her back thing. Maybe this is going to be a breakthrough, and we'll have her passing the evening away in her nursery in no time. Or maybe she'll just wake us up in thirty minutes. And we'll have to try and reconstruct her newborn napper while still attempting to sleep. That's the great part with kids, you never know what's going to happen next. They could throw up on you, or poop through their diapers, or cry for hours. I mean, the possibilities are endless.

Or they could lay their tiny head against their mother's chest and gaze back out at the world, all eyes, their head slightly bobbing, a buoy on some quiet sea, and you can trace the spidery purple veins on their forehead with your fingertip and admire that most exquisite creation.