Around 1am this morning Charles and I were woken up by Nicole screaming. A child crying in the middle of the night is bad enough, however, when you know there is nothing you can do to comfort them it is even worse.
Nicole was about 3 months old when she first started waking up in the night screaming. She would cry, hit us, and scream inconsolably for about 20 minutes. Nothing seemed to calm her, then just as fast as it started it would end and she acted like nothing had happened.
Her pediatrician stated these episodes were night terrors and were a sleep disorder. I immediately started researching the topic. Night Terrors are different from a normal nightmare. The child cannot wake up from the terror. All our attempts to console her were making no difference because she was sound asleep. Research states that children have no recollection of the night terror the next day, which is a blessing because they appear to be very traumatizing.
While there is no cure for the night terrors, there does seem to be ways to control them. Consistent sleep schedules work very effectively with Nicole. If she misses a nap or stays up late, we can pretty much guarantee she will have one either that night or the next. In more severe cases, parents have reported that waking their child shortly after they fall asleep can interrupt their sleep pattern enough to stop the night terror from happening.
Keeping Nicole's sleep schedule consistent helps alleviate the amount of night terrors she has, but does not completely stop them. When she is sleeping well she has about 1 night terror a month, compared to the 2 to 3 a week she was having. When they do occur, all we can do for her is hold her and be there for her when she wakes up.
For more information:
http://www.nightterrors.org
/http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000809.htm
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