can a 10 month old have nightmares?

[Turtle35]

For the last month my DD has been waking suddenly crying out hard in her sleep, I am afraid to let her cry in case she wakes up and screams the house down, could it be nightmares? what can I do to help her stop? it happens almost every night at least once. I put her dummy back in and she stops crying.

Turtle, my DS does this sometimes and he is almost six months. But it's not every night (and it hasn't happened for over a week now). I have to actually get him out of the cot and cuddle him as he looks terrified, but within a few minutes, he is completely calm and falls straight back to sleep. It also only happens a few hours after he has gone to bed, never in the 'middle of the night'.

I deffo believe this is bad dreams.

bump ............... does anyone else have any ideas

Babies and children can cry out when they go from one spell of deep sleep to another (sleep cycle) and this is often after about 4 hours of their nighttime sleep. It's sometimes called a night terror. The child isn't really awake and will not remember waking in the morning. This is when sleep walking happens too. Nightmares tend to happen later in the night or in the wee small hours and the child will wake up properly and be frightened. There's quite a lot about this in 'Solve your child's sleep problem' by Richard Ferber - even if you disagree with his controlled crying method there's some interesting stuff in his book.

But I have a theory that babies around 9 - 12 months go through a stage of sleeping badly and I think it may relate to separation anxiety or the physical stage of being able to crawl very well but not having much language. My 10m ds2 is doing this at the moment and I remember ds1 doing it when he was nearer 12 months but he was later to crawl. They're both really good sleepers usually. This isn't based on anything written by an 'expert' but some of my friends agree and I'd be interested if anyone else thought so.

vivie thanks so much for your advice its alway reassuring to hear someone else has had the same/similar experience. I have had one other person say it may be seperation anxiety and she does cry when I leave the room during the day which is so stressful.

hi turtle35 my ds the same. has just started nursery 3 days a week and definately screams more after nursery. I do think its seperatio anxiety and just checking your there. I do hope its stops soon have to start night duty in a couple of months and ds goes mental if dh goes to him in the night not me.

my little boy is 16months and wakes several times during the night, its a high pitched scream. Sometimes its just a few sconds and goes back to sleep on his own but later in the night about 2am it happens again, i have to go in and pick him up and cuddle him then put him back into bed and he goes off to sleep again but then it happens again at about 3am. Someone said it may be night terrors but i dont know what i should do either!!!! I have noticed its happen more since he stopped having night feeds, he is in bed by 8am and has a dream feed at 11am otherwise he wakes up later then doesnt have anything else until about 6am or 8am at breakfast, wonder if that has anything to do with it as he always used to wake at 2am for a feed.

it could possibly be pain in her teeth, or yes nightmares are a possibility, when my dd was very small (now 10mth) i was sure she had nightmares about being born, because of the suddenness and pitch of her cries, it scared the life out of me, but she seems to have grown out of it now. good luck, hope it gets better!

MMG - it could be that because he's used to a night feed he could be hungry, try just giving the dum (if you use one) or soothing him back to sleep or give him water from a bottle, eventually he'll know he doesnt have a night feed and will sleep through (or thats the plan anyway!)

My 8mo definietly gets nightmares and has done for a few months. He'll be fast asleep and will start wimpering gently - he is obviously still asleep. If he wakes or is woken during this period he screams the house down for a minute or so and then quickly calms.

I always wonder what he's dreaming about. I guess dreams about being left alone and now he's odler the fear of strangers is kicking in.

i hope he eventually grows out of it, he does have a dummy which i give him and tried water, he is teething again at the mo so maybe that is bothering him too, just have to bear with it hey!!
thanks for the info :-)