For at least three weeks now, we've been part of the 2am club. It's an exclusive club of three members and it involves at least twice nightly gatherings, usually, as the name would suggest, around 2am.
Since around six months old, Ethan has been a good sleeper (*touch wood*, *crosses fingers*) and aside from needing one of us to stay with him, or be close by, as he drifts off the sleep (which we don't mind really), he's slept through each night with only the odd disruption if he's unwell or had a bad dream.
So this new routine of waking up at around 2am on the dot and then perhaps again later - or sometimes earlier, depending on when he's gone to bed - has taken some getting used to.
It feels a bit like having a newborn again - but as soon as I think that, I laugh at myself as I remember the awful feeling of sleep deprivation and waking every two hours to feed a baby.
We're not sure what's going on, but we have a theory. After one or two nights of this happening, we wondered whether something he'd watched on TV was upsetting him or if the dragon in Room on the Broom was giving him nightmares.
He then started mentioning a boy. Staring at him. Who he was scared of. For a moment, we thought we were entering into some scary Sixth Sense territory, until one night he said to me, as I was settling him back to sleep, that he was afraid that a boy from preschool was going to come and hurt him.
Had this been on his mind all along?
The boy in question we have never met; he's older than Ethan and was in the group above so he rarely saw him, we understand, but apparently he was boisterous and for whatever reason or occurrence, Ethan was scared of him. He said that he'd hurt him and over the past couple of weeks his default has been this boy.
I'm not sure if anything really happened at preschool with him, as the nursery workers didn't really know much and the boy has actually left now. But trying to tell Ethan this has taken time to sink in. It's really caused him anxiety and we've been unable to reassure him.
That being said, he has been better for the past couple of nights, waking just once and even sleeping through on Friday. He settles for the most part, although I have had to get up with him around 3.30am on two occasions to go downstairs as he's just not been tired any more. Cue nodding off on the sofa and a truck load of coffee the next day.
For how long we will be a part of the 2am club, I'm not sure. I have a feeling that we may be coming out of this phase and it is getting that bit easier. Here's hoping!
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