Baby waking up hysterical

[Jac1978]

Over the past couple of months my seven month old has been doing this strange thing in her sleep where she snorts really fast as if she has been crying and winces. She does this for a couple of minutes then suddenly wakes up In distress. Sometimes she really is hysterical and its horrible, eventually a feed seems to calm her down. When I hold her and comfort her I can feel her little body jump as she sobs. Then she seems ok again. It's not all the time, maybe once or twice a week, has anyone else had this at all?

Hi Jac, do you think your daughter could be having a nightmare? Just wondering as you say she's crying in her sleep and then waking up crying too.

It's possible she's crying to process a scary or upsetting experience in her dream, and then waking up crying, because it's fresh on her mind. Crying can be upsetting for us to endure, but it is actually healing for babies, (when there's nothing immediatley wrong such as hunger or tiredness) as tears contain stress hormones, so the baby can release them and recover from any stressful experiences they might have had recently, or from the birth or prenatally. We always try to stop crying, in various ways, even when there is nothing really wrong.

Do you think your daughter is hungry when she wakes up, if so is she crying because of that?
If it's not such a long time since her last feed, (less than 2 and half hours). I would not feed, but allow the natural healing process of crying to take place.

Thanks that's really helpful x

I saw my son do this once, I crapped myself because I thought he was having breathing difficulties, but he was just crying in his sleep. i woke him, and he had a full blown cry. Think its like a nightmare......could it be a baby version of night terrors ?? He had these when he was 2, would wake up screaming in terror for no apparent reason, I could not comfort him, and he looked through me, really strange, but very normal. My DD also had these when she was 2-3.

I agree with cloudhands think its just a baby nightmare.

Mine does this - freaked me out at first but now I gently wake her with a warm wet flannel and it seems to calm her down.