night terrors..... HELP

[Mine]

Hi

Does anyone have any experience of lo's with night terrors..??
By 6 month old ds has been having these on and off for a couple of months now. tonights was the worse, I really don;t know what to do apart from pick him up from bed and just hug him really tight and sooth him.

He cries so much whilst still alseep that he can;t catch his breath, he shakes and sometimes cries until he wakes himself up to be sick.
Its frightening to watch.

[lilyloo]

my dd started this at 2 we find it worse if she has had a few later nights or got overtired, can be worse on nursery days.
I tend to put the light on to really wake her and try to hold her until she settles, agree it's awful and sometimes she doesn't really wake so it takes a while to re settle her.

[Dragonbutter]

DS1 started this at 4 months. The first time he screamed so hard he forgot to breath and lost consciousness.
We had 3 ambulance trips to A&E with what i could only describe as uncontrollable screaming, unresponsive and once he came round he was very dazed.
On the fourth time our neighbour, a GP, witnessed it and said it looked like night terrors but had never heard of it in such a young baby.
Eventually he got a diagnosis from the paediatrician of Fusional Arousal Parasomnia.
Then he stopped doing it around the age of 1.

DS2 has done it twice since around 6 months.
This time i'm much more confident to cope. If he's awake enough to pick up (not floppy) then i pick him up and cuddle him. I stroke his face and hair to try to bring him to a lighter level of sleep but not wake him up completely.
DS1 used to be quite strong and throwing himself around so i couldn't always hold him so would lie next to him on the double bed.

It's scary, but am reassured that it's not harmful.

[Dragonbutter]

I've also found that missed naps and overtiredness can be the cause.

For mine, they always happen about 2 hours after they've gone to bed.

[dizzydixies]

hi dd1 had them, first of all huge sympathies

she had them for ages and there was nothing we could do to stop/help her

was completely assured that she had no knowledge, it only distressed us

went on till she was about 2.5, finished before dd2 was born thank goodness

still has an occassional night where she shouts at someone or gives someone a row in her sleep

we ended up having to keep a diary of all her daily activities/ naps/ what she ate/ drank/ toilet etc

nothing stood out so we were sent up to hosp to see peds where the helpful woman printed off the BBC health page and handed it to me, told us we had the option of coming back with dd1 to the sleep clinic so they could monitor her or wait it out

we decided on the latter. it IS horrible to hear them in what appears to be pain but they don't have a clue

hang in there, it will pass

[tiredandgrumpy]

ds had these when he was older, about 2. Like dragonbutter says, we wondered whether they were more likely when he was overtired.

I did, however, read that you shouldn't cuddle them in the middle of these terrors as it can prolong them - the child believes they're being constrained & may thrash about more to break free. That said, it's hard to just sit and do nothing.

Must be horrible to see this in a baby, especially as you can't rationalise with them when it's all over. Hope your ds grows out of them soon.