Those who have dealt with night terrors... I need your help/advice PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!

How did you cope?
It's been 3 weeks today... every single night. Night terrors before midnight (screaming, not awake. Sometimes bolt upright, other times not), then nightmares after midnight, where most of the time he wakes, but isn't always coherent or asks for silly things.

He actually been commenting about the monkey from Toy Story 3 (which I had NO idea about until I watched it with him), on the odd occasion.

We are averaging 4 hours broken sleep a night, plus the added bonus of my 19month old who is teething and is also quite ill. It's been 3 weeks of bugger all sleep and I don't know how much longer we can go on. So far, we've tried everything suggested (and I mean EVERYTHING) and nothing seems to work at all.

Do I use the wait and see approach and hope he grows out of them? How long can we expect it to go on.

PLEASE I need replies... I know I'm not in the cool group but I'd really appreciate some advice.... I'm at the end of my tether every single night.

Oh hun, night terrors are the worst :comfort:

What sorts of things have you tried to help him? Just so I can let you know what helped here, but don't want to run through all the stuff you've done already ;)

Ok,
So I've tried drawing things out with him.
Giving him nice things to think about before bed every night.
Waking him after 90 mins of being down to try and restart his sleep cycles.
Making sure he's not too hot.
having more of a bed time routine.
having no routine.
Talking about what he's scared of at night.
putting him in a different room.
In a different bed.
laying down with him.
Bringing him in with us.
limiting TV before bedtime.
and I'm sure there are a few more... but I'm struggling to think right now.
I have another thread in this section.... as the night terrors coincided with us being flooded out of our home for 8 days so I thought that might have been the issue.

He's currently having a day sleep now with a dummy (which he hasn't touched a dummy in nearly a year).
He's 3 years and 5 months old.

:hug: can't read and not post. When we have had them here they have passed quickly but the girls at MG and I were talking the other day and some additives could be causing them. Might be worth checking the failsafe website and seeing if there is a link? Hope you find something that helps soon, sleep deprivation sucks. xoxo

The only thing that works for us is to put DS in our bed and talk to each other. It has a calming effect but doesn't work entirely. He is totally unresponsive to us and just keeps crying out 'mummy' even though I am lying there with him. So draining so I know how you feel. I do try to rouse him. I know if I can get him to drink some water the episode is almost finished although it usually takes 20mins or so to get to that point. DS is growing out of it though and hopefully yours will too. He used to do it every third night and now (about a year on) it is about once a month. Big hugs.

Is there a cool group on here? :think:

Our only solution is giving some rescue remedy if they seem really upset when they wake up, and then usually have them in our bed as well for the rest of the night. It seems to stop them waking up all the time if we are there with them.

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:hug: can't read and not post. When we have had them here they have passed quickly but the girls at MG and I were talking the other day and some additives could be causing them. Might be worth checking the failsafe website and seeing if there is a link? Hope you find something that helps soon, sleep deprivation sucks. xoxo

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DD was getting triggered by caramel III natural colour. Also one called "Annatto" but I'm not sure if it's the same thing. She can't really talk yet but I ask her before we go to bed what we did that day and she has a good 30 minute ramble about her day (mainly random noises). That seemed to help us.

HTH hun and hope he settles soon

That's right, Annato which I think is 160b from memory is the one we were talking about. Seems to be in just about everything so a little hard to cut out but not impossible.

my ds2 is about the same age, and every few nights he wakes up screaming the house down, convinced something is crawling on him. i have to turn his light on, wake him up and show him that thgere isnt anything there and it was a dream, then comfort him enough that he is calm enough to go back to sleep, but cant turn the light off after that, else he wakes up worse, so i put the hall light on else ds1 wakes from the light. ive also noticed if the hall light is left on all night, not sure what one but, it either dosent happen, or he dosent need to scream the house down because he can see for himself.
maybe a night light might help?

Got the light on in the hall and the door open ( if we didn't, he'd soon let us know! haha).

I'm considering trying a dummy tonight to see if it helps and then if it does, I can wean him off it slowly (although I doubt a dummy would do much... but there's no harm in trying hey!).

As for foods... I will look into that. He's got a HORRIBLE diet because he's the worlds fussiest toddler. Thanks ladies!

The first thing to remember is that night terrors are not about being frightened. It is a physiological response to the brain changing between the stages of sleep too quickly. Routine changes, bedroom changes, talking about things etc isn't going to have an affect on how his brain is working.

Generally night terrors happen in a progression, in that they will start off slowly (maybe once a week), build to the worst point (can be up to several terrors per night) and then taper off again to nothing. We have been dealing with them going on five years now, luckily DS is only having them once every 4-6 weeks now, rather than the up to six times per night every night we had at the beginning of the year.

There are medications that you can get, but you need to have a paed assessment & they only offer them in very severe cases where the child isn't growing properly due to having improper sleep. Our DS, while he was a bad case was not bad enough to warrant medication.

The only thing that we could do was to wake him. If the terrors happen at a certain time every single night then you can wake the child to reset their sleep cycle. Doing it after only a certain amount of time won't work, you have to catch the particular cycle that causes the terror. So if he wakes at 1.00am every night, go in wake him at 12.55am. Make sure he is fully awake & can answer a question. Offer him a drink of water or take him to the toilet if he's not in nappies. Most times it will work. It seems like a pain to set an alarm to wake him at the right time, but 10-15 minutes of waking him & resettling him is far better than dealing with the screams I can assure you ;)

Sorry to hear you are having a hard time. We have gone through phases of this happening. Sometimes it would be when DS was overtired, when he was attempting to go without a day sleep. In the end I tried to get him to have a short nap during the day.

Other reason was mixing with his older cousins, invariably playing with older toys or games. We had to make sure these were ok for him, a tough battle as this was at my mils place and we didn't want him watching violent video games.

It is so hard to watch, my DH is so much better at soothing him. I tend to panic or overreact by his behaviour.

Good luck, I'm sure it will pass and soon for you all.

:hug: girlfriend, I totally hear you on the sleep deprivation and the feeling helpless.
We've had them since DD was about 18months (I know that's no help in the time frame thing but hopefully that someone else out there understands too). My DD is an extremely heavy sleeper, like once she's asleep you CANNOT wake her until she's ready. She kicks and screams and hits, but has no idea. Ours are from about 10.30 -2am usually....actually is is often the exact time I get into bed and shut my eyes lol.
I second what Sarah said about waking them just before (I learned a lot of coping from her and knowing what Z went through). When D was smaller I used to be able to wake her and it helped immensely.
Now sadly the only time she's really able to be woken is once she starts the terrors. It does lessen the drama over the night though if I am able to wake her before. Changes in her life seem to set them off. We have moved twice this year and she started preschool for the first time....this particularly bad few weeks...I really have no idea this time.

woops I meant it's better if I wake her before...not after the terror starts even though that's the only time she's easily woken....thanks Sally I read it back after reading your post.

:hug:
We do what {sarah} does, wake him just before he would usually start a terror. This worked for a little while. We also found it went in cycles and thankfully only happens every 6ish weeks for about 2 weeks then nothing for 6ish weeks. The only advice I can give is to make sure the area around him is safe. Brendan thrashes around his bed during a terror and can cause himself an injury if left. Also once the terror has started it's better not to wake them (in our experience anyway) not only is it difficult to anyway, but if woken can make things worse.

It's so hard :hug:

Sarah is right on the mark about night terrors - my DD has had them in the past & they are horrible to watch/go through. I did find that certain founds with colourings/additives tended to co-incide with when she was having them. For example BBQ sakatas. Thought they'd be a good little snack until she had a terrible night terror - cut them out of her diet & she hasn't had one since. Hop on the fed up website - she has a printable list of additives etc... that can fit in your purse for shopping.

Also we stopped trying to wake DD as she tended to go longer (one went for over half an hr once :S)

:hug:

My DS has also been getting night terrors. From my research there seems to be a genetic component to them. My DH had them at the same age. It also seems that being overtired contributes to them so I try to make sure he gets to sleep at a good time etc.

The only thing I do is to go in and hug him and lie down on his bed with him until he calms down and goes into a restful sleep.

subbing so i can come back and re read later wen im not so tired going through the same thing here

:hug: to you...

We get the odd one here when DS is super tired. My boy has an awful diet too - so maybe there's something in the food additives thing :dunno:

We found that DS would wake up almost precisely 10 minutes after we had gone to bed. We figured out that the house got too quiet and ever since we leave gentle music playing all night and he doesnt wake up as much (some were 'night terrors' some were just 'awake'). just a thought.

I hope you get some relief soon :hug: