Sleeping Children and Stomach Cramps

From: sarah hampton (na)
Story type: Angel
Location: florida
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Sun Aug  5 19:23:03 2007

I was babysitting in an old house far from where I lived. I had had trouble with my stomach and I would get nauseous easily so I put my medicine on the side of the baby’s crib. I was spending the night there because the parents of the two children where going to visit a relative. It was 10:00 and I was getting tired. The baby and Aiden, the tiny little boy, had gone to bed and I checked on the kids twice before going to sleep on the couch. I had this horrible feeling in my gut, like I was going to throw up. Something was terribly wrong with me. It was worse than any other time. My mom had told me not to have the medicine unless I seriously couldn’t stand it. I ran to the baby’s room and looked all around the crib for my medicine but it wasn’t on top where I had left it. I looked inside the crib to see if it had fallen in, and to my horror, I saw that the baby was as still as a stone and not breathing. Her tiny pillow was smothering her face. I immediately took the pillow off and tossed it on the floor. The baby started hiccoughing and breathing heavily. I panicked because the little eyes had opened and looked up at me in fear that I had never known that a baby so small was capable of. She took one last gulp of air and closed her eyes, with a tranquil look on her face. I put my finger under her nose and warm air was spouting out, so I felt peace myself. She was okay! Thank you God! I thought. I had forgotten about my stomach and it felt normal as if was never upset in the first place.

I looked in the doorway… Aiden was standing there in his PJ’s, his eyes half closed with sleep, holding my medicine bottle. I walked over and he handed it to me without a word, walked to his room, and climbed in bed. There was a creepy icky feeling like seeweed wrapping around your ankles.It was like walking into a spider web; you can’t tear it away, it’s sticky and it lingers on your clothes. As a young teenager, this totally freaked me out and it took me hours and hours to sleep.

The next morning, Aiden didn’t remember anything about the medicine bottle, and he said that he hadn’t even seen it before. When the parents came home, I asked them about it and they said that he never sleep walks or talks in his sleep. After that, I really thought about it and it struck me as a little more than strange. I get sick suddenly, can’t find my medicine, and in my haste to find it, I find the baby smothered in her pillow and blankets.

It led me to think that had I never gotten sick, I would have never searched for the bottle, and if the bottle was there, I wouldn’t have looked in the crib to find the baby. I also found it strange how the baby woke up refreshed, not cranky or scared.

I had closely observed her and her actions the next morning. What was she staring at all through breakfast? Why was she smiling and laughing at random times. Could she see something I couldn’t see? At first I thanked God for sending my angel to help me. But I got to thinking that maybe it wasn’t my angel. It most likely was the baby girl’s.

Either that or God has his own funky way of guiding us through groggy sleep-walking children and stomach cramps.

-Sarah Hampton