My daughter almost killed me in my sleep (‘night terror’)

 My daughter almost killed me in my sleep the other day.

However I may never know how close I actually was. At the time though, it felt like I was a goner.

If you ever had what’s referred to as a “night terror”, it was a similar experience, and I’ve only ever had one. It’s a feeling of being in an unconscious state between dreaming and waking, where you are perfectly aware of what’s going on around you, and you want to wake up or do something, but you can’t, and you keep thinking about it, but you still can’t. The one previous time it did happen to me I was sleeping in the back of a van while on a road trip, I could hear all my buddies yakking and I wanted to get up, but I COULD NOT.  

Parasomnia, as it's otherwise known, is a cousin of sleepwalking, and for some reason, the authors here don't recommend waking up someone in this or that state.  (Why the hell not?)

The setting: Lazy weekend afternoon, watching retro cartoons on YouTube with my young daughter who came into the room after I had just started dozing off.

I was sleeping on my left side, facing the wall, under a big down comforter and the phone was not far from my arm with all the retro cartoons playing quietly. (Laser blast sounds and robots hurling threats at each other.)

She thought it would be comfortable, I guess, to rest her head and chin in the valley across my neck for ideal viewing, and I can’t be sure for how long she was there.

I suppose I was happy she had visited but I became aware that something was very wrong as well. I could feel the pressure on my neck and in that dreamlike state where you don’t really know what is what, I thought that I needed to take conscious action to tell her to move or just to move myself. And with each passing moment I felt like my ability to communicate, to return through the tunnel to the world of the awake was slipping.

Could I just utter the word “Stop!” or “Move!” or “Help!” And that weight became heavier and heavier and I wasn't sure if I’d ever make it out. In fact, I am not sure if this was a real emergency, or I was just dreaming that it was, but I assure you that at the time I couldn't tell the difference.  I did some reading up on asphyxia and the arteries in the sides of the neck, and the pillow side had a support hump in it, and of course her weight was adding pressure to both sides.  

After a few long, terrifyingly helpless moments of this, I just thought, “Let go, there’s nothing that can be done.”

Then I immediately woke up and said, "No." She got off.  And I lived to see another day.