My handsome, sweet baby boy was clinging to the bed rail crying in fear, I had never seen such fear on his face.

Yesterday was a rough day. My 20 month old was taking fussy to a whole new level and my 3 year old said he didn’t want me in our family any more and those are just the highlights. That was all erased in second.

I have been tired, amazingly, incredibly tired. I went to bed thinking of how to make tomorrow a better day. I woke around 2am and went to the bathroom. I’m not going to lie, I fell asleep on the toilet. Suddenly I heard a sound that woke me, I will never know what that sound was or if it was real. I finished up in the bathroom and heard another, almost imperceptible noise coming from the baby monitor in our room. I wrote it off as the baby making noises in her sleep as the sound was not loud enough to trigger the sound activation on the monitor.

Something made me change my mind even though I didn’t hear the sound again. I sat up, put my glasses on and turned the picture on the monitor on. I saw the baby fast asleep and waited for it to change to my surely sleeping toddler. But he wasn’t sleeping, he was sitting up right against the bed rail. I watched for a minute, he didn’t seem to be doing anything. I almost went back to sleep, figuring it was just random middle of the night playing.

Again, I changed my mind. I got up, put my slippers on and walked to Elliott’s room. What I saw wasn’t playing, but fear. My handsome, sweet baby boy was clinging to the bed rail crying in fear. Everything stopped for a minute. I had never seen such fear on his face, I’d never heard the cry that he was crying.

He said that lizards had crawled into his room, that they were everywhere. I told him they weren’t, that it had been a dream, but he still clung to me, refusing to touch the bed or the floor. I finally convinced him to stand on the floor while I turned the light on. We took everything off his bed and looked all over the floor to show him the lizard’s were not there.

He was still scared but agreed to lay down in his bed with me. There we stayed for way longer than I would have liked. We talked about Paw Patrol, grasshoppers, airplanes and why lizards are called creatures. We examined shadows around the room to see what made the one that looked like a hand and where the blue light was coming from.

Slowly but surely his body relaxed, he uncurled himself and started to stretch out. He moved one inch, then inches, away from me. At some point I fell asleep. When I woke up, cold because he steals blankets, he was asleep. I quietly made my way back to my room. So so tired, but changed by what had happened and still fighting back tears.

As I fell back to sleep all I could see was his scared little face and all I could think about was that he didn’t call out for me. I’d reminded that he could always call for me, that he could shout and it would wake me up and I would be there to help him. He told me he’d wanted to help himself. But in the predawn light I just kept wondering -what if I hadn’t needed to pee? Would my sweet boy just sat there scared and crying to himself? I don’t know how to make sure that never happens. What I do know is that I will never forget what that fear looked like and I will do what I can to avoid ever seeing it again.