DS and his nightly screaming WTF?

[Bellared]

Afternoon ladies,

DS is 2. He used to be a great sleeper but the last 2 weeks since he has moved up a group in Nursery it's all changed.

He's started waking in the night screaming, really terrified of something and wont sleep again til I'm lay on the floor next to him. There is a nightlight on and the bedroom door open a bit with the landing light on.

Bedtime is:

19.30 in bed (unless DS is at my mums then its when she thinks he is tired) then sleep between then and 9.30pm with lots of rapid return til he gets the message. Then the waking is from 11pm til about 3.30am and can be one time or three times. I sometimes have to take him out of his room to calm him down before putting him back. Then he's up for the day from 5-7.30am. I'm not too bothered about the 5am wake ups as we go downstairs and he will quite happily play whilst I doze on the sofa.

He also only has a vocabulary of about 10 words which are the words you would expect a 12-18month old to have (mama, dada, bye-bye, ta, seeyah etc) so he is unable to tell me whats wrong and sleeps for about an hour or 2 most afternoons

So any tips and advice for getting back to his normal sleep patter wod be greatly appreciated.

Is he waking or is he just screaming in his sleep? Have a little google for night terrors and see if it seems to fit.

It is possibly caused by the change at nursery. It may not seem like much of a change to us but to him it will be massive and night time is when he will do a lot of processing.

Hi, he is waking when he screams and last night DH ended up in there with him all bloomin' night and he still woke every hour or so just to check daddy was still there. I was in with DS for an hour and I knew he was asleep when I got up to leave but mummy radar was on and he woke and kicked off with the banshee wail. I'll Google night terrors and have a see. Thanks for you reply

We've got the same! 2.5 yrs old, previous amazing sleeper, happy to go to sleep on his own, sang for hours. Got the chicken pox and since then won't go to sleep on his own, wakes up every night and needs someone to lie with him til he's asleep again, can take hours. My sympathies, isn't it exhausting! I've consulted widely and most mums seem to say it's a phase, to be endured gently, making little steps where you can, involving CD stories, gradual withdrawal (ie a little further away from the bed each night), and cutting down the lunchtime nap.
Good luck, and let me know if you find anything actually works!

Introducing a very dim nightlight worked for us with this phase. Took ages for us to find this out though, you have my sympathies, good luck...

Hiya all, I've looked up Night Terrors and it doesn't seem like it. He's very screamy too during the day throwing some right tantrums but I'm putting this down to tirdness as he is still faffing about in bed once me or DH are in with him. Even on days he doesn't have a nap he's still as equally a mare as he was when he has had sleep!

Well that's good for you that it doesn't seem like terrors. Hopefully it will settle back down in time with lots of reassurance.

So do I. Thanks for your replies all.

Hi, my DS (15 months) recently went through a phase like this, from angel sleep baby to screaming through the night as though he was being covered in boiling oil, only calming if I (not DH) went in to pick him up. Similar times of waking as your child too. With DS it lasted a week, thankfully no longer. I thought it may be separation anxiety (I'm heavily pregnant and he may be aware of a change to come, we had also spent the last 4 weekends in different places visiting relatives) coupled with teething, and recovering from a nasty UTI. Anyhow, the only thing to calm him was being in his room, initially lifting and strocking his back / head, then putting him back in cot (to sreams, arched back etc), but letting him stand up and just leaning into cot going 'shhhh', eventually he'd lie down again and I'd stay with him until he fell asleep. Most often resulting in me commando crawling out of his room. It was a nightmare, but ended as abruptly as it started and he's back to normal again. We haven't risked taking him away from home though. No teeth have come through (it started about 3 weeks ago), but he is drooling now so maybe...good luck - hopefully by now it has passed and you've got your sanity back.

HI MWBT,commando crawling - brilliant! And v.pregant too , I have only just had chance to check MN now as I've been up there trying to get DS to bed then I fell asleep. Thats reassuring to here it stopped as soon as it started. I've just spent 1.5 hours continually putting him back into bed. Good luck to you too!