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I need to know everything there is to know about night terrors.
I had dd at the paed on Friday and he said that what we are going through is probably night terrors. He gave her something to help her sleep that I can use for a week and he refered me to a child counsellor if after that, dd's sleep does not improve.
So any info, web-sites, tips, hints ... anything, please. I feel so sorry for her, I just want to help her sleep better and feel more rested and not be so scared.
Hi. We went through night terrors with DS from around the age of 7-8 months (I know, incredibly early!:rolleyes:) till he was 16 months old.
Unfortunately there was nothing we could do to break the cycle and even to a certain extent comfort him. DS's terrors could go for up to half an hour of him screaming, thrashing about and being generally unresponsive. We found that by holding him it would either get worse or we would end up injuring ourselves from kicks etc. So we would either leave him in the cot and just sit in the room with him and wait it out, or we would take him out and put him on the carpeted floor surrounded by cushions etc so he couldnt hurt himself as sometimes in the cot he would be hitting the bars and we didnt like to see him do that.
As a parent it is incredibly hard to just watch and feel so ineffective.
The only thing that was really recommended to us was to make a diary of his terror pattern and see if there was a specific time he was waking each night. If you saw for instance that he was having a terror most nights around say 11pm then the recommendation is that you wake the child around 10.30pm to break the sleep cycle. And by waking I mean completely waking, getting them out of their cot/room and then resettling and putting them to sleep. This will then hopefully break the sleep cycle and eliminate the terrors.
Unfortuantely for us DS's terrors were always at random times so we could never establish a pattern - hopefully your DD will not be like this.
At 16 months DS all of a sudden stopped having terrors, no explanation or no reasoning behind it. What a relief that day was.:)
Good luck and I hope you can find a solution.
Oh hell, that really is early. I've read that kids between the age of 2 and 6 get them. And you are right, it's scary, really scary.
I think that keeping a terror diary is a great idea!! And I have also read that you can wake them up before hand, if you know when they are most likely to get a terror attack. Mostly dd gets them around 10 - 11 pm, so it's possible that we can wake her. And then she gets some more in the early hours ... don't know if that might change once we are off the seditive. The dr told me that MAYBE after she gets some good quality rest .. like now, she MIGHT stop having them as night terrors are sometimes brought on by them not sleeping well, it's a cycle thing.
She actually still wakes up now (while on seditive) She comes into our room anything beteen 00:00 and 01:00 .. crying and gets into bed with us and stops. We don't mind the co-sleeping, as long as we are all getting some sleep.
I would believe that it was a huge relief .. thank you for sharing :)
I hope that both your DD and you manage to get some good nights sleep whilst she is on the sedative! :)
DS is still a bad sleeper and like your DD comes into our room, often crying, at some point in the early hours of the morning. He also then hops into our bed and co-sleeps which most nights is not a problem.
Cross my fingers for you anyway.:pray:
The past three nights were WONDERFULL, thanks to the sedative. I really hope that it breaks her cycle and she is ok after this medication.
Thank you :)
There was another thread on NIght Terrors
https://www.bellybelly.com.au/forums...t-terrors.html
Thanks Georgi ... I found that one ... after I posted mine :doh: