I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
December 4, 2005
At 3:30am, I’m woken from a deep sleep by an eerie sound.
“Uhhhhoooooooh. Ohhhhhhhhhoooh. Eeeeeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh.”
It’s coming from the baby monitor. I look over at the screen to see Baby standing in her crib, moaning in an otherworldly voice that she never uses when she’s awake.
“Hmmmmmmmmmmaaaahhhhh.” “Eeeeeeeoohhhhhhh.”
I wait, bleary-eyed, hoping she’ll go back to sleep. No such luck.
“Ma ma!” “Ma ma!” “MA MA!”
Before these late-night wake-up calls, I had always pictured myself as the loving mother in a flowing robe who rushes at the first cry of her child to lovingly comfort her and chase the bad dreams away.
But the real me is a little creeped out by the whole thing.
By day, Baby’s room is a cozy, happy place with lots of books and cuddly stuffed animals. By night, it’s an obstacle course of sharp-edged toys and beady-eyed, supposedly inanimate creatures staring at me from dark corners.
Once inside, I turn on a nightlight. It’s not for Baby. It’s for me.
She’s still standing in her crib, hair in her face, staring straight ahead and making those freaky noises.
“Eeeeeeeuuuuhhh. Ohhhhhhhhhgooooooo.”
In this zombie-like state, she’d be a perfect candidate for a horror movie. Gingerly, I reach under her arms and lay her back down. She stops moaning and stares up at me. I pull an ottoman up beside the crib and hum softly for a few minutes until she closes her eyes. After another minute, I stand.
“Ma MA!” Her head pops up. She’s looking at me. I sit back down.
“Shhhhh,” I say. Her head drops back to the pillow. I can’t see her on the other side of the bumper.
I wait. The silence grows. The shadows loom. If she pops her head back up, I think, it will scare the hell out of me. I tense, waiting for it. Waiting for it. Waiting for…
Pop!
“Aaagh!” I yelp.
“Ma Ma!”
This is so not working.
“Shhhhh,” I say. She puts her head down, obediently closes her eyes.
I feel guilty. What kind of crappy mom is afraid of her own daughter? Will she sense my late-night fear of her and end up becoming a person who deserves to be feared?
After all, I suppose even Freddy and Jason and Michael Myers were once little Freddy and little Jason and little Mikey. Perhaps they were normal boys– until their moms started jumping and shrieking whenever they’d appear at their bedsides in the wee hours of the morning.
“Hmmm,” I’m sure little Freddy thought to himself. “I’ll bet if I wear knives on my fingers, she’ll scream even louder.”
“Boy, my hockey mask really brought the house down last night!” thought little Jason. “Maybe I should try out my act this summer at camp!”
Is this the road my own little daughter is headed down?
She did keep insisting on wearing my underwear on her head yesterday. Will this be her panic-inducing disguise of choice? Who’s to say?
Whatever her neurosis, it’s sure to be all my fault. I will have single handedly turned an adorable baby girl into an underwear-headed toddler of terror, striking fear in the hearts of all denizens of suburbia.
Or so I imagine as I doze chin in hand on the ottoman. I wake with a jolt, only to find that she is, at last, asleep.
I look at her in her crib. Eyes closed, she is a cherub, a sweetly sleeping delight. What was I thinking? I leave her room, softly closing the door, and head back to bed.
That’s where Hubs lays asleep, rhythmically making the sound of the undead. Clearly, he was kidnapped by aliens while I was gone and replaced with a decoy. There is no way a human could snore like that.
I lie in bed, deeply troubled, tentatively looking at him every now and then and at the shadows that surround me. Aliens. Here. I watched “The X-Files.” I want to believe. Unless it’s 4am. Then I don’t. I just want to go back to sleep. But that won’t happen any time soon.
This is the real reason I no longer get any sleep. And it’s too horror-bly embarrassing to talk about.
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>Girl, you need to drink more.
>I used to get creeped out by my kids bedroom, not my kids per se, but the room (it was an old creeky house). I used to hot foot it out of there as soon as I could. Thinking, “goodnight, momma is frightened of your room, but you had better stay in here and not make a peep”. I always felt guilty for this.
>I had all those fears as a kid, but now I’m only afraid of heights and large bugs. Would she go back to sleep if you let her cry?No? Oh well.
>You made me LAUGH….so much….I know it is cruel..but I have SO been there..the twitching towards the door and the evil eyes from the crib that sense the least little move…Oh Lucinda, thank you…Minerva
>Totally off-topic. But I must know, who is Mistress Mary and why are you walking with her? (I clicked it and nothing happened.)
>Oh lord, I’m dying laughing over here! I wrote a post a while back very similar to this one, so I know just how you feel! Here’s to a good night sleep for us moms who DO NOT snore! LOL!
>You bring back memories – not all good ones. I remember falling asleep in the floor beside the crib while waiting for my youngest to go back to sleep without spitting out the pacifier – which woke her up again. Thank God that’s over for me!
>Testing to see if my comment will come over. For some reason, no one can leave comments that show up on my site and I left one here yesterday and it’s not showing up. Have you had problems? Darn that BLOGGER!
>By the 2nd or 3rd kid you get over it. Although…when they are old enough to creep silently into your room, and stand a mere 4 inches away from your face and whisper, “MOM?”, it will scare the living crap out of you!
>I scare myself like that too sometimes. Especially when I’m home alone. 😉 Thanks for stopping by my site.
>Hydrocodone. Try some.lol.Yeah I scare myself when I walk to me car alone at night. Always.
>Good to know. Maybe I will put some extra night lights in the baby’s room.
>Baby monitors are evil. You really do not need to be woken up by every baby burp, gurgle, and fart.Turn it off and get some sleep. If the baby needs you, it will find a way to let you know.
>no wonder you don’t get any sleep. maybe ear plugs, or another room, maybe hubby and baby in the same room.
>Or how about when the ‘big Kids” have a nightmare-or the big fat farting, snoring, blind yellow lab wakes them, and they come into your room while you are SOUND asleep, and they just stand over you-and you wake and for sure your having a freakin heart attack! Boy! do i know this:)
>This is why thinking in the middle of the night should be strictly forbidden and punishable by a marathon of B-grade horror movies. (Like there’s any other kind…)
>Poor you. I used to wake up to a crying baby and pray that they would just cry themselves back to sleep. Sometimes it worked. I’m not good at waking up in the middle of the night.