I don't know if the mice were involved in the plans, but the plans of men definitely went a-gley last night.
Big Bear and I went Out. We went into the village for a nice meal out together. This is part of a New Drive that I've initiated to try and actually do nice stuff together. I decided that at six-and-a-half it was about time we got LittleBear used to the habit of being babysat by someone other than his grandparents (who achieve this feat about once a year, being so distant from us) or by Piglet, who has her own small Piglets to wrangle. We've had two lovely young people, NiceGirl and NiceBoy, come round and play with LittleBear, so that he gets to know them beforehand. He was very taken with both of them, and enjoyed lecturing NiceGirl on his preferred volcanoes and their attributes almost before she'd had a chance to sit down. So last night, she came to babysit. LittleBear knew this in advance, agreed that this was OK, and went to bed as normal.
But, thanks to the bloody clocks changing, LittleBear was still not asleep when NiceGirl arrived, despite it being half past eight. So, on hearing the front door open and close, a small voice piped up from upstairs....
"Mummy? What's going on?"
"NiceGirl is here my love, so Mummy and Daddy can go and have dinner."
"Can I have another cuddle?"
"Yes of course you can."
So upstairs we trotted and gave LittleBear extra cuddles and kisses. I got a "night night" along with a bit of a trembly bottom lip. BigBear got a rather more final, "Goodbye," in the tone of one saying farewell for the final time.
With a certain amount of trepidation we went out, moderately sure that LittleBear was tired enough to simply fall asleep. And we had a nice meal, and a drink, and chatted to each other, and there wasn't a peep from either of our mobiles, despite us having them sat on the table so we could anxiously poke them from time to time. All seemed well. And then we came home.
NiceGirl reported that LittleBear had started crying after we left and declaring that he didn't like it when Mummy and Daddy aren't there. And then he'd announced he felt sick, so she'd taken him to the bathroom (where he wasn't sick). And then he cried some more. And finally, after cuddles and reassurance from NiceGirl, he'd fallen asleep. At about half past nine.
My poor baby.
My poor babysitter.
We duly snuck into his room and kissed his sad, snoring little head and whispered that we loved him before going to bed ourselves. Fortunately I didn't have much time to lie awake fretting about the emotional trauma caused to small boys and teenagers by my selfish desire to spend some time with my husband. Nor did I have time to have much (if any) sleep, before I heard the telltale sounds of a distressed small boy emanating from his room.
In I dashed, to find my LittleBear sitting up in bed, bewildered and distraught. I'm still not sure if he was actually awake for the next half hour or so, because he made almost no sense. He trembled and shook. He cried and whimpered. He squirmed and thrashed. He begged and sobbed.
"I can't do this..."
"I hate this..."
"It hurts..."
"I'm sad..."
"I'm so sad..."
"I can't explain..."
"I can't..."
"I don't like this..."
He (again) said he felt sick, but wasn't.
Nothing we could do seemed to get through to my poor boy. Nothing could stop the trembling. He tried to explain that everywhere hurt if you touched him, (which sounded rather like a hyper-sensitivity I get when very, very, very tired or ill, when the surface of my skin becomes unbearable to touch). He flailed around and was immune to all forms of cuddle, comfort and reassurance.
Eventually we did what every parent does - we dosed him up on Calpol and carried him off to Mummy's bed while banishing Daddy to the spare room.
As soon as his head hit the pillow in our bed, his little body relaxed and he fell asleep. Literally the very moment he was tucked in. The trembling stopped, the whimpering stopped, the breathing slowed, the limbs relaxed. After a couple of minutes he flailed an arm, hit me, disturbed himself, announced "I'm sad" in a pathetic manner, before sliding back into sleep again. He slept soundly and solidly until my alarm went off at 7:10am at which point he had only the vaguest recollection of the trauma of the night, and agreed he'd probably been having a nightmare. I am not going to insert into his mind the possibility that it was in any way related to being upset about having a babysitter, though I have my suspicions. Meanwhile I woke every hour or two to stare intently at my sleeping baby and worry what I'd done to him.
So that went well.
And now I'm wondering if, how and when BigBear and I will go out again without a repeat of this trauma (for all involved). I'm wondering how we reached this state of desperate neediness. I'm wondering, as ever, where I've managed to go so terribly wrong with my parenting. I'm wondering what, if anything, I can do to instill more resilience and confidence and happiness in my fragile little son. I'm wondering how other people ever manage to have a life outside their children when it so consistently eludes us. I'm wondering if I'm just going to have to wait until I have a TeenageBear who no longer wants and needs me before I can be free to be an adult human again, at which time my heart will break into a thousand tiny pieces because my beautiful bear no longer wants and needs me.
Nothing is ever simple.
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