Dreams of a (soon-to-be) Father

Ok, I was going to include this in my last post but it got too long so it gets it's own separate post. Sara also mentioned the wacky dreams I've been having.

Several weeks ago, Sara and I purchased a nice dresser from Ikea for Champ's bedroom (like the one to the right but blue). As we were putting it together we listened to a podcast from This American Life. The theme of the show was "fear of sleep." Each bit featured stories about horrible things that happened at night to the story tellers. The first segment included Mike Birbiglia, a comedian who is frequently on the show, talking about his struggles with sleepwalking. It is hilarious and I highly recommend listening to it (it's about 15 minutes) before reading the rest of the rest of the story below.

A couple weeks after that show, I woke up to find these huge, dark black spiders with very bright colorful markings dangling from the ceiling right above me in bed. They looked like big black widows but their markings were of different colors. They were in a ball and there were two or three of them together. Then the string of web they were on broke and they feel on to my stomach in the covers. I bolted up and jumped out of bed and, standing next to the bed, began rifling through the covers and sheets to locate the spiders. I couldn't see them so I turned on the bedside light. But the light was too bright and I struggled between dimming and brightening the light. I didn't want to wake Sara up but I needed it to be bright enough to find the spiders. Finally, I left it pretty dim and went back to digging through the covers.

At this point, Sara, confused by my grabbing at the covers and the disco strobe light effect I had been making wakes up and asks what I'm doing. I tell her about the spiders and she informs me that there are no spiders in the bed and I should go back to sleep. This sounded like crazy talk but I needed a second to think about it so I went to the bathroom to relieve myself. Upon returning, I still think there may be spiders in the bed, but I'm tired and, if there are spiders, I'll find them when I get in the bed.

Sara's been working some odd shifts recently and, at times, has struggled with sleeping. A week after the incident above (yes, the spiders were in my dream) Sara couldn't sleep so went downstairs. Soon after, I got out of bed and charged to the landing above the stairs. When I woke-up, I found myself at the top of the landing and was very confused about why I was there or where I was planning to go. I didn't realize Sara was awake so I quietly walked back in the room and went back to sleep.

So, Sara thinks the sleep walking might be baby related. Honestly, I have no idea, but I hope it stops and doesn't escalate into me jumping out of windows or climbing on top of tall furniture in the middle of the night. I would hate to have to wrap myself in a straighjacket before I go to sleep. Or maybe we could just find a really tall crib for me.