DD having nightmares?

[susiemj]

My 15 week-old DD has recently started waking from her sleep very suddenly screaming. There's no warning. Sometimes she settles back with a bit of comfort, sometimes not.

She's also going through a clingy phase. I'm trying to be as reassuring as possible, picking her up etc.

Do babies this young have nightmares?

I can say that my DS was the same, he started around the 3 month stage and I never found anything that helped, he still has them now, I too would like suggestions on this, he is now 5

Sorry for not bringing good news

I always thought it was tummy ache rather than nightmares when my DS did that.

my dd2 is 3.10 and I think that she was having nightmares from this age.

She has only very recently (the last couple of months) settled at night. We found ways of coping with having her in our bed, and for coping with our own tiredness. There didn't seem to be much that could be done to stop her waking up.

Sorry I haven't brought good news either.

But it could be tummy ache - is she pulling her knees up?

It seems different from tummy ache. She's had that too. She's just completely still and then WHAAAAAAAA.

It isn't a nice feeling knowing that you cant help them, as I said my DS still has them to this day although they have become less frequent, alls I can do is reassure him when they do happen that I am here and cuddle up with him, he seems to settle better then.

We let dd2 come into our bed whenever she likes, and we just cuddle her lots when she has a bad dream. As I said in my previous post, they are less frequent now.

Do all kids do this? It's not very nice.

no they don't.

One of my three does.

NOne of my friends' kids do

There are other probs with my son, but I have know of alot of children having occasional nightmare, it is probably something in nothing and will go away in due course, cuddles and reassureance seems to be what everyone else does too, I know one of the first ones my son had after he started talking was about someone taking his milk away as he was shouting "no, my milk".

My little one does this on occasion and shouts out or screams - she is 24 weeks. I find too that just a cuddle and a kiss is enough reassurance for her to settle back to sleep - poor little things I wonder what they dream about at that age?

my ds is 12 now, but has suffered from nightmares since he was a baby (trying to remember how old, thinking about 6 months ish) its something thats awkward to deal with because they are so young, but he still suffers now. Ds has more night terrors and sleep walking, when he was younger (2yrs till about 10) he would see things and point "its over there" could be very scary, but I would just have to reassure him, and to put it bluntly after 12 yrs its just part of him.

Now as a young man he talks alot in his sleep, does occasionally sleep walk but his sleep is not disrupted as much as when he was little, he says that when he was little he dreamt of tigers and monsters????

I did see a bio psychologist about it, and because of the age not much can be done, to young for drugs, could be monitored but hard on a little one, they did suggest studying the sleep pattern, so for instance if dc wakes crying 2 hours after you put them down you should try waking them 1hr 30 mins, so the sleep rhythm is disrupted and they have to start back at beginning again, it was suggested that this resets their sleep pattern, I never did it ds had a random pattern could never keep up.

Hopefully they will grow out of it, if not you can only comfort and reassure.