When Emma was a baby she would scream and scream. We tried everything we could; warm baths, nursing, swaddling, big swinging in the car seat carrier. Nothing worked. It lasted from 3 weeks to around 4 months. I can’t tell you how often I was up in the middle of the night walking around the dark streets of Maryland. She was still pretty fussy up until she could walk. We officially dubbed her colicky but our doctor never diagnosed her so maybe, just maybe, it was the unexperienced parents that we were.
Anyway, there were nights when she was older that she would wake up out of the blue screaming. It was that familiar scream from her infancy. Ya know, the kind with no breathing involved. There was no comforting her, no reason we could find for the screaming, and absolutely no way we were going back to bed anytime soon. She would be in these hysterical states and it drove us nutty. We just had to grin and bear them.
Last night was one of those nights.
“Emma, what’s wrong? Mom’s here.”
Waaaaaaaaa
“Emma, are you okay? I’ve got you, it’s okay.”
Waaaaaaaaaa
“Shhh, Emma, everyone is sleeping.” (we had guests downstairs)
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
“EMMA, PLEASE!”
WWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Needless to say, it is so hard to have patience in the middle of the night. Is this a girl thing? Have any of you had similar experience? Any recommendations of how to deal with a unreasonable, hysterical child when they are half asleep?
5 responses so far ↓
1 Kara // Feb 20, 2008 at 12:20 am
Yep, I have experience. And no, it’s not a girl thing. These are called night terrors (that’s an official diagnosis, really), and any child can get them, usually between ages two and six. My two year old could be described exactly as you’ve described Emma–colicky for an unusually long time (almost all colicky babies get less fussy by 3 months–mine was 4.5 to 5 months before she stopped screaming all the time). And she started having night terrors at around 9 months. Between 9 months and two years she’s had maybe 10 or 12 episodes of terrors, and they’re always exactly like you said. She’s still mostly asleep, screaming without any apparent reason, and we can’t comfort her or even wake her up to get her to stop. Usually lasts 10 or 15 minutes, then takes another 10 to get her back to bed. So really, not so bad as far as time goes. Just annoying because it’s hard to have them be that upset and not be able to fix it right away.
Anyway. Just google child night terrors or similar and you will find the info you need. In a nutshell, they think it’s caused by a difficulty with transitioning from one sleep stage to the next (I’m assuming you’re aware there are different stages of sleep–REM cycles, etc.) so their sleep gets disrupted when their brain is not ready to wake up. Night terrors are not dangerous and don’t signify any other big problems. They’re basically just a pain in the rear, and there’s nothing special that is recommended to fix them. They usually go away by the time the child is 6. And unlike nightmares, kids don’t remember night terrors when they wake up, so you don’t need to worry about Emma actually being scared.
By the way, they do say that being overtired can cause night terrors. I don’t know if you’ve noticed a pattern with Emma, but I realized after my daughter’s second terror that she has them exclusively when she’s off her sleep schedule. Every one of them has occurred when she’s either missed her nap or gone to bed much later than normal. So a good prevention can be to ensure that they’re getting plenty of sleep and staying on a consistent sleep schedule.
Hope that helps!
Kara
2 Melody // Feb 20, 2008 at 10:49 am
How frustrating! I remember having to take Connor on walks around the blocks in Honolulu at night doing the same thing. However, he does not have night terrors. He has woken up once or twice screaming, but within five minutes or so he is consolable and goes back to sleep.
3 SmockLady // Feb 21, 2008 at 3:14 pm
If you are unable to wake her, truly wake her up, then this would be categorized as a night terror. Night terror is very different from a nightmare. Night terrors are hardly ever remembered by the “victim” but never forgotten by the witnesses.
I suffered from night terrors as a child and still suffer from a form of night terrors as an adult - sleep paralysis.
Both of these are usually caused by some sort of sleep “malfunction” in the last (sometimes first) stage of sleep that is our deepest sleep, non-REM sleep, and the body/mind are not together in the waking process and it causes these terrors or fits. It can be a genetic factor, but not necessarily. four of my six children suffer this as well.
Most children do outgrow it. My personal experience of still suffering is because of a trauma, so don’t let that mislead you to thinking she will never outgrow it.
Also, my 10 year old still suffers sometimes from these and his tend to be linked to salycilates (?sp) in his system. He has severe Von Willebrand’s Disease and can not have any meds that have any form of salycilates in them. There are some foods that are filled with salycilates as well (tomatoes) and too much of them cause my boy to have a really bad night terror.
4 Manda // Feb 21, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Hummm, very interesting. I didn’t want to say that Emma had night terrors because (now I know by your description) I wasn’t sure she met the qualifications. I think that she is mostly just crying like crazy. I believe that she is awake. She appears to be awake. She is just so upset and crying so hard that it’s difficult to get her to calm down and do something else, ie. go the bathroom or go back to sleep.
Interesting though because my mom said that the same thing happened to me when I was a child until I was around the age of seven. She didn’t call it night terrors either. It seemed like I was just suffering from bad dreams.
5 Sarah G. // Feb 23, 2008 at 9:21 pm
With night terrors they do look awake, but they are not. Kind of like sleep walking.
It is like no one is home and there is nothing you can do, but ride it out.