PDA

View Full Version : night terrors anyone?



megs4413
10-01-2006, 12:01 AM
i know i had them as a child and my mom says DD is the age now where i started with them. we've only had two episodes so far, but it is scary and so sad! i don't know what to do....i'm afraid to google it....has anyone out there BTDT? my heart is broken for poor DD...

bcky2
10-01-2006, 12:14 AM
yep btdt. it is sooo scary and sad to watch. our doc tried to put him on meds to make him sleep deeper but i didnt like that idea. he got to the point where he was having one every night. he now has pretty much grown out of them, only one every once in a blue moon. we get a cold wet rag and would wipe his face down to help him wake up. dont google it, you get lots of weird stuff. just as long as you make sure she is safe and cant walk somewhere and get hurt then she should grow out of them. my ds would walk but not all kids do. i know it is hard and i hope they end soon. big (((hugs))) to you and your super cute dd.

megs4413
10-01-2006, 12:20 AM
thanks for the reply. i really dont' want to google it....i'm afraid of what will come up with "night" and "terror"! she can't walk out of her crib as of yet...she isn't a "climber". i know my mom said i used to walk outside! she said she found me screaming in a foot and a half of snow one night in my pajamas. i wasn't even two yet....i'm sure it was quite terrifying for her.

is it OK to wake her up? i'm not sure if i should let her keep having it and stay asleep or if i shoudl try and get her up as gently as i can...i will try the wet rag....i have also tried changing her diaper, but it doesn't seem to work...my heart is just aching!

ribbit1019
10-01-2006, 01:06 AM
Maddy has them all the time. It is super scary and very upsetting to me, it doesn't seem to phase her at all. The really bad thing is she has them every night at the same time no matter what time she (or anyone else) goes to bed (between 3:30am and 4am). It is very odd that it is so consistent. It has been going on for about a month and a half. I wish there was a better way to deal with it.
To answer your question about waking her up, it actually helps DD. Once she is awake she huffs for a couple of seconds and then falls back asleep peacefully. Strangest thing to watch, she's screaming bloody murder one second and then sleeping peacefully the next.

Big hugs Megs!

Christy
My Waterbabies
http://lilypie.com/pic/060928/Yw0w.jpg http://b3.lilypie.com/0vphm4.png
http://lilypie.com/pic/060928/iBmU.jpg http://bf.lilypie.com/uy3Mm4.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v221/steitzsmith/Other/jump.gif

mommyoftwo
10-01-2006, 02:15 AM
Ugg, I HATE night terrors. Amelia had them terribly for a while. Unfortunately, she would wake up screaming and wouldn't even know who we were. We had to be very careful because she would hurt herself. She would throw herself against the side of the crib and if we got her out of the crib she would throw herself against the wall. She would be so upset that she didn't know who we were or where she was and would scream in terror. It would take at least a half hour to calm her down and I was the only one who could do it. Of course most of it happened while I was pregnant with Linnea which just made things worse (HG doesn't care what time of night it is as I'm sure you have experienced). What worked for us (our peds suggestion) was to give her a dose of benedryl before bed and another one when she woke up. It didnt' take care of them but made them less frequent. She eventually outgrew them. Every once in a while she will still have one but they aren't nearly as bad. They suck and they are scary. I dont' have any good answers for you but I feel your pain. I didn't like the idea of drugging her but I was afraid of what might happen to her if we didn't. I don't know how extreme our case was, but it wasn't fun that's for sure.

bcky2
10-01-2006, 08:55 AM
my doc said to try and wake him up. he would scream for like 20-25 mins if we didnt then usually wake up and throw up :( after i looked into night terrors and what most kids see during night terrors then i had to. at least you can feel good about the fact that they dont remember them. here is a link with the definition of what happens in a night terror. click if you like, it isnt really bad like what some sites go into(a bunch of b.s. basically) but i didnt want to copy it here in case you just dont want to know. http://www.nightterrors.org/ with my ds it had to be a cold wet rag and it still took a few minutes. but his were bad enought and frequent enough they wanted him to go to a specialist at a sleep center. i didnt want my child to be studied at the age of 2 so i declined. it will get better and i hope it does fast.

Twins2000
10-01-2006, 09:42 AM
One of my DDs used to have them fairly regularly. She stopped having them when she was about 4 or so, but started having them again last year when she started Kindergarten (stress definitely can be a trigger). She is now 6 and luckily hasn't had any since last year. I had googled it, and after weeding through all the info, found that what worked best for trying to prevent them was to not let DD get overtired, keep her room cooler, and especially try to not let her feet get too warm (as weird as it sounds, we noticed a difference when we stopped having her wear socks to bed). When she did have one, we were able to lessen its duration by further cooling down the room (opening the windows in the middle of the winter), and if it was an exceptionally brutal/long lasting episode, we would even put her feet in cold water, which basically was the only thing that would wake her up.

Good luck to you and your DD. Remember, she will eventually outgrow them! As my father says, "this too shall pass."

Leslie

Raidra
10-01-2006, 07:48 PM
I used to have night terrors as a kid.. yes, they do suck. I also used to sleep walk.. my parents had to barricade the front door 'cause I would leave the house, and they also found me dialing 911 on more than one occasion. My husband also does very weird things in his sleep (he'll sit up and talk to me, some hilarious conversations have come up this way).

Luckily my kids haven't had any night terrors yet, but I've read up a bit on what to do and hopefully won't be too surprised if it happens.

My one piece of advice is.. if you have someone babysit while she's sleeping, make sure you mention the problem to the babysitter! One little girl that I used to watch all the time started having night terrors, and the parents neglected to tell me. It scared the crap out of me, and I had no idea what to do for her. I was 15 and didn't make the connection, I thought she was dying or something.