I sleptwalked last night. I remember jumping out of bed to “check on Eli”, who was asleep in our hallway. I woke up in the hallway, realizing that Eli was not, after all, there, or needing me to check on him.

I have sleptwalked all my life, more or less – it comes in waves. I always wake up the next morning remembering sleepwalking, whether I actually wake up during the walk or not. I did it quite a bit as a kid, and Mom and Dad were used to it. I would run into the living room where they would still be up and watching TV, and I would panickingly tell them something completely nonsensical. Mom would calmly tell me that I was asleep. I would start to argue, then think about it for a second, and say “oh. You’re right. I am asleep.” Mom would then take my arm and escort me back to bed.

Oddly enough, my sleepwalking quit altogether when Chris and I got married, except for one time when I woke up about to go out the door. That was scary. So other than that one instance, I had a six year break from sleepwalking – which ended very abruptly when Ali was born. Then it started up again with a vengeance. Literally every night for at least the first three weeks after we came home frmo the hospital, I would sleepwalk. I would think she was in the bed with us and wake up frightened (we never co-slept with her) and run to put her back in her crib, only to discover that she was already in her crib. If I didn’t wake up when discovering this, I would always gently set “fake baby” in the crib with “real baby” just to make sure. Another sleepwalk I would have is that I would look up and see Oreo in her cat perch – but in my dream, it was Ali – I would actually “see” Ali in the cat perch and think that Chris had put her there. I would wake him up and ask him why he put Ali in the cat perch. Sometime in the process of waking Chris up (before I actually woke him up if he was lucky), I would wake up and realize that it was actually Oreo, not Ali, in the cat perch.

It was a pretty vivid time of sleepwalking when Ali was born – I will never forget it. It was so wierd how it was EVERY night for so long. However, my most memorable sleepwalking experience happened in a funeral home. How can I shake that memory??

When I was an early teenager, Mom, Mammaw and I went to visit some relatives in Mississippi. They lived in a converted funeral home. It was a long, winding house, where every room would lead to another room, rather than there being a central hallway that led to all the rooms. We got there late, so we didn’t “tour” the house before going to bed. My mom and I were sharing a bedroom, and we were told that we would be sleeping in the former embalming room. Nice. There were two rooms off of the embalming bedroom – another little room (where Mammaw was sleeping), and a bathroom. So I got ready for bed in the bathroom, then headed to bed. Sometime in the night I sleptwalked, totally unconscious of it at the time (usually I have a “reason” for sleepwalking and I at least remember where I go and how I got there, but this time I didn’t remember at all), until I SUDDENLY wake up in the bathroom with no idea how I got there. So I open the door to head back into our bedroom, but it’s a closet!!! I KNEW that was the door that gone into our bedroom earlier that evening. So, slightly panicking, I open another door, and it dead ends into another little room that I’ve never seen before. REALLY panicking now, I open the THIRD door in the bathroom. It opens into another room I had never seen before – a bedroom – in which our hosts are asleep in the bed. I had apparently sleptwalked through the master bedroom, into the master bathroom which was identical to our bathroom, except that the doors went different places. I tip-toed past them, managed to windingly find my way back into the embalming suite, pulled the covers up to my nose, and didn’t move for the rest of the night!!!

6 thoughts on “Sleepwalking

  1. Haha, so babies are a trigger for you…interesting.
    I remember waking up MANY times, holding my pillow and thinking it was Sam (we never co-slept either). Anyway, I would very carefully release the “baby” and start to sit up…usually realizing it was a pillow, not Sam.

    Also, I slept walk quite a bit as a young teenager but I don’t think I’ve done it since Bob and I got married either. Oh, and I seemed to like to walk around with the TV remote while I was sleep-walking. Interesting, huh?

  2. hmm. . . tv remote and sleepwalking. . .I’m trying to come up with an interesting subconscious reason for that, but I’m at a loss.
    So question – did you ever sleep “nurse” your “pillow baby?”
    That’s usually what I thought I was doing when I would go put “fake baby” back in bed.

  3. Now that’s just creepy. :) I never sleptwalked(is that right?) but my sister and I used to talk and laugh in our sleep all the time. One time we were in the bed and we were just laughing and laughing and apparantly my mom kept telling us to be quiet and when we didn’t obey she came in the room only to find out that we were talking and laughing in our sleep. Funny things we do sometimes huh?

  4. That’s great! My brother (JC) and I shared a bedroom when we were very young, and I have been told that we argued in our sleep:
    “Did too!!”
    “Did not!!”
    Lucky for you, you and Allison were having FUN in YOUR sleep!!! :)

  5. I know that I don’t know you all that well, but I have to say that I can relate to the sleepwalking thing. No not first hand, but second hand. You see my husband is a sleepwalker. There are so many stories that I could share, but the most memorable for me are the ones in which I could have died. First he got up in the night and cut up the sheets with a pocket knife. Then one night he thought there was an animal in the bed and he covered my head with the sheet and tried to hurl it off the bed. If I had not told him to go back to sleep he would have snapped my neck. Needless to say, I sleep with one eye open now.

    I have really enjoyed reading your blog and hope that one day when we make it down that way to see Eli, Lindsay and JC, that we would also get the opportunity to meet you and your precious little girl.

    Reese

  6. Wow, Reese – that’s some scary sleepwalking!! :)
    Thanks so much – I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it!

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