Midnight Conversations

This is me, back when I was more well-rested. Little did I know what was in store for me after the honeymoon...


You are looking in the eyes of a sleep talker.

I have a history as both a sleep walker and talker. There were stories told to me as a child, like yelling, "Let's Play!" in the middle of the night and falling out of the upper bunk at camp (and onto one of the poor moms who was sleeping in a cot alongside my bed). However my husband says he's not heard me talk, probably because he's hogging all the midnight conversations for himself!

My dad is also a sleep walker and talker. My grandma told me how shortly after my dad started working at the grocery store, she found my dad taking food out of the fridge in the middle of the night and loading it into the open oven! My mom said shortly after they got married (and he was a police detective at this point) my dad tried "fingerprinting" Mom in his sleep. She said he was starting to get frustrated too, grabbing her hands and telling her to relax!

Now, my husband is not a sleep mumbler, everything is loud and clear (may I emphasis again, LOUD!). He's also not just an occassional sleep talker. This is an every night, all hours of the night kind of thing.

And I'm kind-of exhausted!

Samples of sleep talk I've heard:

"Multiple choice. A, B, C or D?"

"Guess what?" Then a long pause in which I say, "What?" and then he says "Magic!"

"Who's there? Who is that?!"

"Too close! Too close!" and then a loud, "Shush!!!!!"

"What did you say?" - of course, always when I haven't said a word.

And there is always a lot of him asking me, "Whatcha doin'?" or "What's going on?" To which usually my weary answer is "I'm just trying to sleep!!".

Last week for about a half-hour he went on and on nonstop like a one-sided phone conversation, saying "Uh-huh, yeah, mmmm, ohhh, huh". I tried rolling him over, talking back to him, rubbing/slapping/punching him in the arm to wake him up or at least stop the broken record. But this guy sleeps like a log and there was nothing doing, he didn't stop. I finally fell asleep, bored of the repetition, I guess!

Last night within about 3 minutes, he sat up and said some random word that I can't remember (something odd and complicated, not a word that anyone would just say everyday). I wish I could remember because it was so obsurd and funny that I laughed out loud. About a minute later, he said softly, "Oh, that's good!" and I started giggling again. When he heard me laugh he said, "You drinkin' water?".

Oh my goodness, the randomness makes me laugh! Fortunately I'm not a totally light sleeper and once I fall asleep, I don't really wake up much. But initially he's always falling asleep before me and then chatting like crazy so I have some trouble falling asleep quickly like I used to.

He has a great sense of humor about the sleep talking and always wants to know what he said so we can have a good laugh about it. Sometimes he says he remembers it. I just wish it had an off-button!