Sleep Part 2: Sleep Safety

Last week I wrote about how sleep deprivation can take its toll on parents. This week I’m going to touch on how sleep can actually be dangerous – that’s right dangerous!

You might think I’m crazy. How can sleep be dangerous?

Well ladies and gentlemen, allow me to explain.

It all started simple enough. You’ll remember the end of my last post mentioned that the kids, especially Peanut Bear, woke me up in the morning by sticking her little fingers in my eyes, mouth, ears and nose (that’s right, I said nose), and take my word for it things quickly escalate.

By now you know I worked mostly nights and operated on very little sleep (sometimes just a few hours) when the kids were younger. As a result, I usually found myself dozing off, mostly during the daily dose of Baby Einstein.

I figured I would place the kids in the Boppy, put the gate in the doorway of the room, pop in a Baby Einstein and lay next to them on the floor. Well, I quickly learned that I needed to do one more thing before lying down -- and I learned that the hard way.

One day I went through these steps and before I knew it my eyes were closed. It was a light sleep as I could still hear the TV, but that was about it. The kids were just starting to crawl and that’s why I put the gate up (safety first is what I always say). It was shortly after my eyes closed that I was awoken by Peanut Bear hitting me in the face with a toy!

I don’t remember what the toy was, probably because she gave me a concussion, but I do remember telling myself to never complain about an alarm clock again. I mean, have you ever been awoken by toy hitting you in the face?! Trust me when I say it’s not pleasant.

Then there were the times Mama Bear insisted on having Peanut Bear sleep with us at night (you’ll find most sleeping stories that end with a Papa Bear injury have to do with Peanut Bear).

It seemed harmless enough. I mean, how much damage can a 1-year-old do when asleep?

Well, ask my nose.

See, Peanut Bear had this habit of violently swinging her arms outward when asleep, and it seemed that my nose was always at the end of that swing. I can’t tell you how many times I was smacked in the face over the course of a night. I started sleeping with a pillow over my head just for safety.

You’d think that Papa Bear’s Little Girl would threat him a little better, even if it was in her sleep. But I have to admit, it wasn’t Peanut Bear who put the biggest hurt on Papa Bear.

One night Junior Bear, who was about 2-years-old at the time, got a treat and slept in our bed. Junior Bear, though, doesn’t like sleeping under covers for whatever reason and he does move around a lot (which is an understatement) and this led to one of the worst experiences in my entire life.

At one point, Junior Bear – my offspring, the boy who will one day carry on the proud Papa Bear name, the boy whose dirty diaper I used to change changed – lifted his leg and kicked me in the privates!!!

I woke up in such pain, screaming at the top of my lungs. It gave a whole new meaning to a starry night.

Mama Bear couldn’t believe what happened. She, of course, got a good laugh at my expense. But this leads me to wonder why she never gets this treatment from the children?