DD (9 months) will go to bed, go to sleep and about an hour or 2 later she'll wake up screaming. By the time we run in there (within 15-20seconds) she's completely hysterical. We'll cuddle her and she'll generally go back to sleep within a few minutes.
It's horrible, to hear her do a high pitched distressed scream out of the blue.
Nightmares? Or what?
She's only really started in the last few months, since about 6 months. It only happens once a week to ten days.
Don't have the answer sorry, but I do know it happens here too. Some nights she is so upset there's no way I'd think she'll go back but she does. Still happens on and off now and has been since around that age for us. The first few times it really got my heart racing being jolted out of sleep to hear her scream like that through the monitor!
My DD suffers from night terrors, we had a horrible night last night with her she had an episode and was distressed for the rest of the night. Could she be teething? I know when DD first started teething she would wake up crying, but was very easily settled.
The critical difference between nightmares and night terrors is whether they are disturbed later or not. If it effects them longer than the actual episode it's a nightmare. Night terror kids have no effect or recollection of their terror, nor do they generally respond to calming efforts.
Nightmares leave children frightened/disturbed/hard to settle.
Nightmares do start very early, though generally when they are little they don't know to be frightened afterwards, and often it's external reaction that worries them.
Nightmares have no real pattern, happen at random times of the night/random daily intervals. Terrors are consistent in terms of time they occur and buildup of episodes.
She'll keep crying (and be distressed) when we pick her up and after a couple moments of shh-ing she'll settle down.
Sometimes she'll go back to bed, but most of the time we give her another bottle and she'll go down OK in the next 5 minutes.
BellyBelly Member
Nightmares??
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