Help with Night Terrors - 2 yr old

[Pixie]

Hey there,

So I can honestly say that last night can be put down on our list - if we had one - of one of the worst nights that we have had with our ds.

He usually gets night terrors but they are not that bad usually last not more than 15 minutes. He started getting them when we first moved house in April. We have moved again but that was in the middle of August. He is sleeping in our bed in our room - we haven't moved him to his room yet cause we live in South Africa with Crime being quite high and we haven't finished with all the burglar proofing yet. But the night terrors started again about a week and a half ago.

But to get onto last night - he screamed for 2 and a half hours solid. If he was not crying in my arms he was kicking and screaming lying on the bed throwing his teddy  and shouting "no, no, stop it". We tried everything from loving him, to giving him something for pain, to ignoring him to even shouting at him. And eventually we tried the tv with Barney and although he screamed to turn the light off when we turned the tv off he wanted Barney so my dh put Barney back on and lay in front of the light and he then calmly went to sleep.

Now I am lucky to say that during the day he is a dream. He doesn't throw wild tantrums just normal ones that don't even last 5 minutes. He sleeps well. He is not to sick as I had him at the dr yesterday thinking he was but he just has a post nasal drip. He is at Play school in the morning and absolutely loves it so much, so that when I ask him if he wants to stay at home or go to school he says go to school.

I was told my Peadotrician that Night Terrors are normal and they don't even know that it is happening and if you ask them in the morning they will have no recallection of them as they do them in their sleep.

But please if anyone has any advice for me or has experienced this before please help as it is just breaking my heart 

thanks a mil,
Kate
xx

[Florencia]

Oh i totally feel for you Kate, even 5 mins is distressing I can't imagine how you handled 2 hours!!! poor little guy!

As hard as it is to understand for us, it appears that it's totally normal and that they don't have any memories of that during their awake time, which is reinforced by teh fact that your ds is so happy and well behaved.

I'd suggest you to talk to him about how great it is that we get to go to sleep, buy him a safe friend for his crib and let him know friend is taking care of him during night time. I got a Precious Moments angel that says a little prayer if you press his tummy (some times ds rolls on to it so hard that you hear the prayer in the middle of the night... it also has an off button if you'd like him to stay silent LOL), anyways tell him that friend is watching him through the night, or introduce a night light too so if he wakes at all he won't feak out.

I'm guessing that so many moves are making him for hard to get where he is at night, i mean he was used to wake in the middle of the night and probably go back to sleep without you noticing and without being awake 100%. Now when he does that, he finds himself in a different environment and has had that experience twice since April so that's why he's probably so confused and hard to settle.

I don't have much words of advice, but I've found that talk talk talk helps a lot for nightmares/night terrors. Somehow if you bring it to "real" (that is talking about it) helps a lot to get rid of it.

Another thing that many moms have seen is that lo's tend to get more nightmares/night terrors when overtired. You say your lo sleeps well during daytime but probably he's getting too tired because of the school so make sure he's resting enough and if you have any doubts, put him to bed 30 mis before his usual time. You might be surprised that it can magically solve his sleeps issues (crossing fingers).

Good luck! i hope this awful phase ends soon!

[Pixie]

Thank you so much for you advice. Last night was much better and I moved his sleep forward by 15 minutes. So I will try another 15 minutes and see if that works. Sometimes though when I have moved it earlier we lie there for an hour while he tosses and turns. But I will definitely talk about it with him. I have told husband that we can't let him watch Jungle Book 2 with the scary Tiger in before bed as maybe that is what is making him scared. Cause he always says "Tiger gonna bite you".

He does have a doggie that he calls "Woo Woo" which he uses his tail to tickle his face with and so when he does wake up he asks for it if he can't find it. But I'll talk to him and say that Woo Woo is there to look after him while he sleeps. Yesterday for most of the afternoon I kept saying "baby no-one will hurt you Mommy and Daddy will always keep you safe" And especially when he said "Crocodile/Tiger gonna bite you" I would change it and say - no they won't bite you Mommy and Daddy will protect you and they won't bite you they'll love you rather. So I think I must just go on and on and on about it and hopefully I'll get it stuck into his head.

Thanks again for your advise I really really appreciate it.

Kate
xx

[mum of 3]

Hi Kate

I don't know if I'll be much help here but my nephew suffers with night terrors. He started having them as a toddler like yours and is now 9. He is just getting help with them from a hospital doctor, at the moment they have put him on a melatonin tablet (i think thats right?, its the stuff you produce when sleepy)  there are only available on prescription over here but you can get them via the internet although i wouldn't advise this. As soon as he takes one you can literally see him  calming down and getting sleepy and within 15 mins he is usually in bed fast asleep until morning. since taking these tablets he has been fine, apart from about 3 nights he wasn't taking them and he did have a couple of bad ones in that time, i think on one night alone he had 3. he has to take them for another month then get his strength reduced so we'll see if anything changes then. The doctor has been asking him alsorts of questions to evaluate him. I think they have said that it is something to do with the way the brain handles information, it doesn't switch off properly like yours or mine would and so carries on working during the night when it should be resting, thus causing the night terror.

i know before they got help they tried alsorts, cutting out E numbers, colourings  etc, not drinking milk at least an hour before bed, now this made a difference and they even changed him to soya milk which he was better on too, reduced the number of night terrors he was having.

They always noticed that if he had one it was usually within the first hour and a half of going to bed, now i don't know if you know usually when your boy has his if you could use the wake to sleep method, i don't know how this works properly, i have read bits about it and have also heard of people waking their LO's up at certain times to reduce the terrors, there are good/bad reports on it so i guess each to their own.

here is a link to a page about night terrors, i hope i am allowed to post links if not i apologise and will take it out.  http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/pa/pa_bniteter_hhg.htm i know another one and if i can find the link I'll post it (if allowed)

hope i have helped, even if only a little bit

Nikki

[Pixie]

Hi there,

To be honest I was worried that this could be the problem as my dh had the kind of night terrors where his mind didn't fully go to sleep and what he thought was real was only a dream. He only got these as a teenager and he eventually grew out of them. He has seemed to be fine since that big one now when he has one we turn on the tv automatically and that seems to wake him up and then he just goes back to sleep. But I'll be sure to watch them - how could I not and if they really get bad will take him to the dr.

Thanks for you info it has shed some light.

Kate