Sleep Paralysis, Again

"You awake suddenly at night.  You try to rise, but feel hands pressing down on your chest, groping for your throat.  You try to cry out, but you cannot move or speak. You notice a shadowy figure at the foot of the bed, and hear the steady clomp, clomp, clomp of others climbing the stairs to your room.  Your terror grows, but then as suddenly as it began, the pressure releases and the presence in the room fades into nothingness.  You can now move, rise from the bed, and try to make sense of what just happened to you.  You have just had an episode of sleep paralysis." -- Michael W. Otto, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Boston University

It's almost exactly what happened to me last week. In the dream or nightmare, I was walking toward my bedroom alone, when I felt an invisible hand gripping my wrist. Terrified, I struggled to get away, but my feet felt like lead.  Strangely in my nightmares, I always seem goal-oriented, even when escaping from invisible ghouls and terrifying monsters. I remember that my mind, lucidly clear and determined, was willing me towards the bedroom, struggling against the formless ghost. I tried to yell, but my lungs were choked and my tongue stuck, but still I screamed deep from within my gut as if getting that sound out would release me from my tormentor.

I woke up yelling. Ju lay beside me still sound asleep. Wow. Another one of those. It was quite terrifying, the dream, and I still felt it after waking. The room was far from dark, but Daniel was away in Hong Kong and I had to calm my nerves. It took me more than 10 minutes to get back to sleep. Naturally, I was a bit afraid of a repeat paralysis.

According to Dr Michael Otto, when you dream, you are paralyzed.  "In sleep paralysis, however, the normal cycles of your sleep become out of sync:  your mind wakes up, but your body is still in a dream state.  You are aware of your surroundings, but cannot move and may also experience any number of hallucinations. Most commonly, these hallucinations include sensing the presence of others (including seeing shadowy figures), feeling external pressure on the chest, hearing odd knocking sounds, seeing your body as if from the outside, or experiencing vibrating or tingling sensations.  Any single episode of sleep paralysis may include one or more of these hallucinatory symptoms."

I can remember one or two other episodes I've had, and they were terrifying, to say the least, and likely why I still remember them vividly years later. My symptoms are similar to that described above, except in my case, the dream state is blurred with my consciousness of reality. For example, in one episode, I was lying in bed next to my sister in the house we used to live in, my childhood bedroom, even though in reality I lived someplace else. I was paralysed and an extremely infernal buzzing noise (like the television without a signal) was in the background. My mind was aware that I was in a dream-state (I thought to myself: "You're in a dream, try and wake up! Oh help, I can't move!") and spurring me to reach to my left where my mobile phone lay to call my boyfriend for help. 

The weirdest thing was, there was a dresser to the left of my bed in reality, where my phone probably lay. But the dream backdrop was the room of my childhood. I was suffocating (the heaviness in the chest) and paralysed but my mind willed my arm to move towards the "phone", my source of help. I wonder if in reality, my arm really was able to move since I seemed to be between two worlds, the dream state and wakefulness.

Apparantly, sleep paralysis occurs more often following sleep disturbances. It makes sense if you consider my recent nightly disruptions due to Ju waking in the middle of the night and requiring us to move him to our bed.  Overall, sleep paralysis is normal, and comes with a good scientific explanation. But you can be sure it was utterly terrifying during, and quite bad even after I had woken from it. I would like to know, though, why I seem to experience paralysis within a dream context (my mind is aware it is a dream, yet still experiencing "reality" in a dream world), as if I am straddling two parts of consciousness.

We Have Teeth!

Ju's first front incisors are out!

Last week Daniel's finger got a good chomp down and when we pried open his mouth we saw a pearly little white just barely showing below the lower gum. It was rather sore looking and explained all the moaning he's been doing in the middle of the night.

Saturday we checked again and lo and behold! Two little babies peeking out from the gums. TWO.

My parents are amazed. A few of my friends' kids who are slightly older than Ju haven't started teething yet. We gave Ju his first toothbrush to play around with and he ended up with a waterfall of drool down his chin. Pigeon has a nice range, we bought the 3-in-one, with the beginner's brush for 2-3 teeth and two more for the next stages.

Poor Ju, meanwhile, is still waking in the night. It's likely from his growth hormones pushing the baby teeth out. He's not had any other symptoms besides waking in the night (we have to coax him back to sleep) but that means we have interrupted sleep as well. Ironic that it the sleep issues only came because of his teething.  We'll have to adjust to his night interruptions in the meantime and hope the poor chap gets over the pain soon and get back to sleeping through.