Nightmares, night terrors...here we go again

I think I posted about this about 6 months ago, but Max has started having nightmares or night terrors in the last week again. At first last week it was each night around 9:30pm, they go to sleep at 7:30pm, and he would wake up screaming "no, no, no" and hysterically crying for about 15 minutes. Then he went two days and we thought we were out of the woods, but last night was HORRIBLE. He had about 4 of them lasting 20 minutes each where he was screaming and crying hysterically like someone was trying to hurt him. His eyes were half open and he indicated to DH that he wanted out of bed, so when DH would try to take him down to the living room to calm down he would start getting worse while physically trying to harm DH by hitting or head butting him as he tried to carry him to the couch.

This morning he told us he had very bad dreams last night and I tried to tell him when I was a little girl the doctor told me to wiggle my toes and think of my favorite things. This was the doctors advice to my mom to get me to calm down since I had (still do) terrible nightmares as well as being asleep walker and it was the only thing I could think of this morning. He looked at me like I was crazy and I am wondering if there is something else we can do to help him or do we just have to let him scream it out. The worst is if he gets too worked up he starts to gag and that can lead to throwing up.

I guess we are all tired from last night and I was hoping that you ladies would have some more ideas as what we might do to help him.

 

Jacob has these. He gets them when he is over tired. You may want to try a 7pm bedtime just for a while because he may be adjusting to new schedule or even a growth spurt making him tired. Everything I have read says to leave the child alone as long as they are safe and the terror will pass in 45 mins. If you disturb them, it resets the cycle and prolongs it. Good luck, they are not fun.

 

It also sometimes helps to wake the child prior to when the night terror usually happens. So, if he normally has one about 2 hrs after falling asleep, waking him up at the 1 1/2 hour mark may help him skip that part of the sleep cycle. My son has them too, and when he does we just lay him back down and rub his back until he calms down and falls asleep.

 

Yes exactly both of mine get them if we wake them 20-30 min before they get them even just for 5 min it stops them that night and breaks the cycle I've had those nights it's scary and you feel so helpless hang in there

 

Yes, DD gets them when she is over tired/over stimulated and/or too many changes are happening. Also- ditto leaving them alone as long as they are safe per our Dr. Provide comfort measures. DD open her eyes, talks and everything-- but she really is not awake nor does she respond when we talk to her.

Though if they are true night terrors, kiddos often dont recall them in the am. Nightmares they do.

We banish nightmares w/ nighmare spray (it seriously works) aka perfume in a spray bottle.

 

We have one child with night time terrors too. They come and go in phases. DD seems awake - open eyes, talking, etc. but does not respond at all when we talk to her and starts trashing around when we try to pick her up. So, after consultation with our pedi, we just wait it out and cuddle her afterwards. She does not remember them at all, it is over as soon as she wakes up. We cuddle her and she turns over and sleeps peacefully right away. She rarely has more than one per night, but no predictable time. It is awful to watch but our pedi said not to interrupt them unless she is in danger of hurting herself or throwing up. He said that if you interrupt that weird brain process you can make it worse, i.e. they come more often and last longer. He also said research really did not know what was going on during a night terror, so all recommendations are non-scientific.

The other child has (rare) nightmares which are a lot easier to deal with - we just wake him up and tell him he is safe with us and all go back to sleep (we co-sleep). If he talks about the issue in the morning we deal with it then, not in the middle of the night. If he does not mention it, we don't either.

GL, for peaceful nights!