Bedtime fears....

I did not get much sleep last night. I haven’t got much sleep at all really lately. My youngest is sick, but it would not matter, I do this every night it seems. I am up and down all night checking up on him. For every “weird” sound he does and does not make. I am up if I don’t hear him snoring to make sure he is breathing. I am up if he is snoring, but it just does not sound right to me. Constantly putting my hand on his tiny back to make sure he is fine. Like I said every sound or non-sound I check. 

So there I was tossing and turning not able to get to sleep and my husband asked why I couldn’t get to sleep, reassuring me that our youngest was just fine. I started crying as he put his arm around me, and I mean sobbing. This startled him and he asked if I was okay…. I had really worried him now. So I am going to share with you what I shared with him.

I can’t protect my kids.

I can’t keep any of them truly safe. I felt like that guy from “Final Destination” where everything is a threat to your very life… yeah that was what I was feeling like last night laying in bed. And to my husbands’ credit he laid there with me and let me sob and express my fears. These were my “night time” fears.

I realized for all of my efforts as a “mother lion” I can’t keep bad things from happening to my children. From the benign broken heart (I know it doesn’t seem so) to the more catastrophic imaginings my mind can conjure. And I do it to myself. I sit on here and I am part of a support group on Facebook for parents who have lost their special needs kids… it started about 2 young angels and now there are more. And then there is Reece’s Rainbow, which is a charitable organization which helps in the raising of funds to adopt special needs children from other countries before they are institutionalized or worse….die. So I sit here crying and crying some more, because I feel helpless and am afraid… and even worse and am grateful my child is alive. I am grateful I do not know their pain. And I feel so guilty for this. So at night I am terrified that while I sleep, my amazing little boy will be taken from me for being grateful and happy. Silly I know, but that is what I fear.

Then my mind wanders to my two older children who, one lives on her own and the other who is a defiant teenage boy. Both very independent and who really do not need me other than for the occasional ride here or there. I worry about where they are. Who they are with…heck let’s not kid ourselves I worry they will not look before crossing in the middle of traffic and I will get that horrible and dreaded call to come and identify them. 

The rational part of me says I am putting myself through needless hell, but the mother in me won’t give my emotions and mind a break. I have a vivid imagination, so when I am doing this to myself, my mind would like to kick my butt…(Maybe my husband too) and this is the first time I have voiced these fears other than to my husband, or when I have finally worn him out and he is snoring… to myself. Am I the only one who does this? Am I the only mom who is worried that if I feel too blessed or too happy God (or whatever cosmic force you believe in) will put my happiness in check with some tragedy? So I check… and I lose sleep…and I drive my other two nuts with phones calls… trying to stay ahead of the cosmos.