The last couple of nights, Pinky has been sreaming bloody murder in his sleep. I’ll get out of bed; pick him up out of his crib; comfort him; speak softly; and stroke his cheek, and he’ll quiet down… for five minutes.
This goes on for about an hour or two.
Has anyone else’s children had this sort of trouble while they were sleeping? If so, what did you do about it?
I would really like to sleep again.
An hour or two? My son had them, as did my brother. My son’s only seemed to last 15 to 20 minutes at the most.
All the information I’ve read says that comforting the child doesn’t have any effect and you probably shouldn’t attempt to hold or touch them.
Here’s some good information: Night Terrors
Good luck.
Oh man, my oldest son has had that all his life. He’s ten now, and woke up with it last night. When he was tiny, there were a few times that he just wouldn’t snap out of it, and we stuck him under the shower. Sounds horrible, but when you’ve been faced with a one year old screaming in complete terror for twenty minutes, sometimes you’ll do anything to snap him out of it. It’s hard on a parent - I can catapault myself out of bed and down the hall before I’m awake at all.
Once he stops, he just drops back down perfectly asleep. He never remembers it, and oddly, it rarely wakes up his little brother, who’s in the same room.
My mom says I used to do it too, and I do remember it a little. They say they grow out of it, but I don’t know when.
My 4 year old son occasionally has night terrors. We can kind of predict them- a day with a lot of excitment or physical activity tends to bring them on. We have found that if we wake him gently a 2-3 hours before the terrors generally begin we have reduced their frequency.
While pretty harmless to the child (mine does not remember them in the morning) they can scare the hell out of a parent. When they do occur I just go and hold my son until he quiets down. Even if the child’s eyes are open they are still actually asleep so I try not to wake him.
Who knows how long this will continue…
A more direct link: http://www.askdrsears.com/html/7/T071300.asp
How old is Pinky? My son went through a few nights of this whe he was about 4 months old, and we never figured out what the cause was - we were just glad it stopped and hasn’t reappeared. We had to wake him up so we could get him to calm down enough to sleep.
The boy turned 11 months on Tuesday. We had a good night last night. I hope this is start of a trend. My parents and sister are coming down for a visit this weekend, and I hate for them to be awakened by the siren’s wail.
I’m not sure which are worse, the nights he wakes us up, or the nights he’s quiet, and I wake myself in a panic because he didn’t wake us up.