oh help oh no is it night terrors ?

[Mum2be]

my 7 months old boy has the past two nights woke up just a hour or so after going to bed screaming the house down . last night it took me from 8.30 until 10 past midnight to get him back to sleep and then he woke at 6am , what went wrong i do hope this is going to be a short term thing what can i try to stop this happening i no its only been 2 days but i need to nip it in the bud

mum in need of help

hollie

[mima08]

Hi Hollie, I don't know if it is night terrors (I seem to remember some other threads on this subject here: http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?29,934002,935054#msg-935054

but I can say that my little boy (now almost 2) had (and still sometimes has) various phases of waking up screaming the house down - generally at 3am. It does not usually go on for hours, but has done in some cases...

At various stages things that helped:

- dream feed at 10/11 pm (we did that till he was almost 12months)

- baby chest rub is even the slightest sniffle

- offering milk/water when he wakes up

- toys in the bed (but they can also cause the waking up as he rolls on them)

I really hope it stops soon, because I know how distressing it is - you have all my sympathy!

mx

[Pickle]

I think night terrors are unlikely at 7 months. Is he teething? I would try some Calpol and if that settles him down you can narrow it down to something being sore (not everyone's approach, but I'm on #3 so a bit more hardened to noisy babies!). My 10 month old has been screeching like a banshee the last couple of evenings from about 4pm till bedtime, but her two top teeth are about to break through which I think is the explanation.

[amydown]

I would agree with Picke - sounds more like teething to me. 11m old has gone through stages of doing these and then teeth appearing. Not very immediate though so we did live in fear of "is this a new habit?!?!?"? But thankfully, once teeth were out, he went back to his normal sleep pattern.

[Mum2be]

Riley already has 7 teeth and he hasn't been like this with any of the others , however I did give him calpol , teething powder and bongel spread out but none of that helped , I put him in bed with me but he just wanted to play , so far tonight he has been okay fingers crossed

Thanks for advice :)

Hollie

[Oxalis]

Hi Hollie - hope tonight is better for you both.

My daughter has had occasional night terrors since she was about 10 months old - odd sounding screaming and thrashing around about two hours after she falls asleep. She appears to be awake but doesn't respond as she normally would if she had woken up and started crying. During a night terror she carries on screaming and thrashing around for 5-10 minutes (I think, it feels a lot longer) regardless of what I do. When she was younger she would suddenly stop, close her eyes and sleep peacefully. Now she sometimes stops thrashing/crying and is awake but goes back to sleep quickly with milk/cuddles. The night terrors happen when she is over tired or has a temperature. Other family members have parasomnias. She does also have nights where she is awake (fairly happily provided she has company) for several hours for no apparent reason!

[alieh]

Those kind of evening wake ups seemed to be linked to over-tiredness for us. Has he had bad naps/early starts/late bedtimes recently that might have built up a bit? In our case usually solved by a few nights of earlier bedtimes, but every child is different so may not work for you!