It's 3:00 in the morning, are your children sleeping?

It's 3 in the morning and I have a headache and can't sleep. This is all courtesy of O, I have spent the last hour trying to rationalize the fear away so he could go back to sleep in his room and me in mine. Funny thing is, fear is not rational. So he has ended up the same place he has most nights for the last week and a half, on a crib mattress on the floor to the side of our bed. We've developed a pretty consistent pattern, sometime between 12 and 2, he wakes me up, either by yelling out from his room, or scaring the shit out of me standing next to my bed. From there I make him pee and get back in his bed, he then tells me he can't sleep. "why not O?", I ask, "because I'm afraid", "of what?" say I, "of being alone". I then try to understand and convince him he's not alone, last night he got bored with that and went back to sleep and I got to go back to bed. Tonight, he was on to that, and whenever I would get up to leave he would stir and we would be back at square one, so now I'm at the computer and he's on a much too small mattress in my room. We came up with the crib mattress, because me sleeping on his floor or J trying to sleep in his bed was not working, and no one was getting any sleep. We have always steadfastly refused to allow our children to sleep in our bed with us, it's an excellent rule, I recommend it highly. Not to say there hasn't been the rare night they were allowed in, but that never turns out well. You would think a king size bed could hold 2 adults and a small child, but it ends up feeling more like a WWE cage match complete with eye gouging, kidney kicks, and wrestling for covers. I've never slept in a smaller section of my bed than the nights I've shared it with a child, how a little body takes up so much space I'll never understand.

All this lack of sleep, and O's fears of the weather (and other things) is pushing us to consider some alternatives. We've been taking O to a therapist off and on for about a year, since J had her surgery. It's been a help, if not to him, then to me in ways that I can deal with and help O. We're wondering if it's enough now as we become more sleep deprived. We're going to talk to a doctor about putting him on some anti-anxiety medication. In general I am very conservative about medication, don't use it unless it is really necessary. When it comes to medicating my child with something like this I'm even more reserved. You're messing with the brain with these drugs, his still developing, very bright brain. I worry about fixing one problem only to cause another, and that's without worrying about medicinal side affects. I know plenty of people (friends and family) on these sorts of medication, and they can be very helpful, but as a parent I worry. If it will help him live a better life though, I think I need to try it. J is worried that if left unchecked his problems will just continue to mushroom out of control, and that is a real concern, you don't want his fears to take control and limit his life. I have seen his fears keep him from fun before. At the happiest place on earth, Disneyland, he was unable to really enjoy, because he was too afraid to go on rides that he wanted to. He would go up to the entrance, and then turn around because he was too scared. He's threatened to boycott school over weather reports of impending storms, I had to pick him up from school one day because he had made himself sick worrying about dark clouds and strong winds. I didn't send him to school on Halloween last year because all the kids dressed up worries him. If medication can help him with these things I think I've got to try it, for him, I don't want him missing out on life because it rains. One thing I've had to fight through all of this, is worrying that I have somehow made him this way. Could I have done something different, was there something that happened that made him like this? It's hard not to beat yourself up about it, but I have to know this is just how O is, and maybe he doesn't have to be. That's why we're going to do everything we can to help him, even if that means medication. You can be damn sure though, that I will know everything I can before making the best decision for O.