Night Terrors

Imagine sleeping in your bed when suddenly an ear-piercing wail awakens you.  This is not like other times when baby has woken in the night wet or hungry or both.  Eyes tightly shut and shrieking!  The diaper is dry.  All offers of milk are refused.  But the scream will not cease. You  hold your baby close "wake up, please wake up! You're having a bad dream. Please don't cry."  Night terrors: my son was about one and a half when he had his first.

And then as suddenly as it began it stops.  My son looks up at me confused.  "milk?"
Why Lord? Why?
What horrible thing did I do to deserve a child who carries on so?
Oh right-

When I was a baby I woke up more than my share of people:

Imagine a hot summer night in Los Angeles.  Large concrete apartment buildings mashed together.  Every window is open with the vain hope of tempting a night time breeze.  And then an ear piercing scream echoes off the buildings.  It sounds like a baby is being tortured.  (That baby was me, and absolutely nothing was wrong)  One child's night terror induced scream woke hundreds.  And just after my parents had rocked me back to sleep and ever so gently placed me in my crib, creeping away as quietly as they could for fear of waking me and restarting the banshee-esque wails of their child-

A sharp knock at the door *BAM BAM BAM*  

My dad was just about to yell at whatever idiot was trying to wake his baby when he opened the door and saw the police.

Apparently they had received numerous calls from concerned neighbors and needed to confirm that I wasn't being abused and was in fact still alive.  And they were not inclined to just take my parents word on the matter.
So on tiptoe my parents returned to my crib and with as gentle a gait as they could manage, carried me forth to the waiting men in uniform.  But a sleeping  baby in pajamas though cute to behold was not convincing after all the calls that had come in.  They needed to be sure that there were no bruises hidden under my clothes.  So my parents had to remove my pajamas from my sleeping form with a level of care comparable to that of a bomb removal squad. And all my father could think was "please god, don't let her have bumped into a table earlier today". But luck was with us that night.  I neither had any marks on my person nor any inclination to reawaken.

My parents will never let me forget this story.