Dreadful vivid dreams about my children dying. Is it sleep deprivation causing these?

[gaelicsheep]

I am most definitely sleep deprived, being still woken 3 times a night (between midnight and 7 ish) on average by my nearly 8 month old DD. I rarely get chance to nap in the day which is only going to get worse as I'm back at work full time.

Last week I was really alarmed by two occurrences of horrendous, very vivid dreams. The first was after my DH and I had argued (both dog tired) when DD was having a dreadful night. He took her downstairs, I fell half asleep and when he brought sleeping DD back upstairs I was aware of a thud. I jerked awake with the idea that this was him dumping her lifeless body in her cot - you know like those dreadful men who kill their children to get at their exes. Horrific - I burst into tears when I realised she was totally fine and it really shook me up.

Then the other night I had a dreadful vivid dream about my 4 year old DS. All seemed normal in the dream, then all of a sudden this vehicle comes out of nowhere and mows him down. I look over and see his crumpled little body lying at the side of the road some distance away. I screamed and woke myself and DH up.

I've had vivid nightmares many times when I've got too hot in bed, but never ever this kind of horrific stuff about my DCs. What the hell is going on here?

It's OK, on Googling I find this is far from unusual. I've never had dreams/waking dreams like this before and they scared me a lot. Writing it down helped though.

I've had this and it's absolutely horrid.

Not sure what causes them but I've got a touch of hyper-vigilance (anxiety thing) after two pretty ghastly births. I notice that the dreams flare up when the hyper-vigilance is bad during the days (when I'm tired, run-down, worried about stuff). Could you have the same kind of thing? (Should say that my dcs are 6 and 8 so it can flare up a long time after the initial event that caused the anxiety iykwim?).

It's stress, basically. If you are stressed or anxious and your brain is not shutting down properly at night due to overtiredness or overstimulation then you will get bad dreams. The visuals and the subject of the dream simply match the 'loose emotion' rattling around your head.... and dying children says 'anxiety'.

Anything you can do to get more sleep and reduce your stress levels will help the situation. Could you find someone to babysit overnight, for example?

Not really chil - I'm still breastfeeding. But yes to answer zippy's question I do have other associated symptoms. I thought I was over PND but the snappiness and tearfulness has come back again this week - I broke down in the dentists today over the bill - tres embarrassing! I have just returned to full time wotk and I guess it doesn't take a genius to see a connection.

Before you re-diagnose yourself with PND, snappiness and tearfulness can be caused by chronic fatigue, quite easily. Could you possibly express a few bottles of milk, hand her over to someone else and get a good 10 hours or whatever? I don't think you're going to feel better, quite honestly, until you take some time out to repair your health.

Thanks chil234 - I thought that was the case and I think you're right. She won't take a bottle, but really the killer is not getting to bed until about midnight because she won't settle. I'll have to see about taking myself off earlier some nights and leaving her with DH.