4.5 year old's fears/scary dreams

[Enudely]

My almost 5 year old has lots of fears all of a sudden.  Examples:  She won't walk down the hall to the bathroom by herself (or sit in the bathroom to have a bowel movement unless I'm there), she's scared to be in a room by herself.  She won't sleep in her bed (which is exactly one foot from my side of my bed) because she says she's scared.  She doesn't want to get dropped off at preschool.  She can't really tell me what she's scared of, she just says she's scared to be by herself.

     Often at night, when she is drifting off to sleep, she snaps awake and says "Scary dream!".  I don't know what she is dreaming of.  She has a had a few incidents of fever hallucinations recently that were pretty terrifying.  Also, I had open heart surgery 2 months ago and that was pretty rough on everyone.  That's the only thing I can think of that would scare her.

     She barely watches t.v and only watches really mellow stuff like Calliou, Diego and Dora, Thomas the Tank Engine, Super Why, etc....   

     Is this normal? 

[Alyantavid]

Yep.  My 4.5 year old is also scared of everything right now.  Bad dreams mean he comes into our bed, going down to his room means his brother or dh or I go with him.  Bedtime seems to be ok because his big brother is pretty close and he's got a light on and a little flashlight.

My older son went through this as well and eventually outgrew.  I think it's a pretty normal and common stage most kids go through.