For quite awhile now I'd noticed that when Lina went to bed before 10pm or so, she'd wake up about two hours later in a HORRIBLE mood. Well, really "wake up" since I now know that she wasn't really awake at all. We'd try to figure out what was wrong and managed to get her partially awake enough for her to start making demands. She'd finally come out of the night terror and be bright and alert for a couple hours. Which was horribly annoying when it'd start right as I was planning to go to bed and snuggle up with my sleeping family.
We were lucky enough to recently have two virtually identical days where one day had a night terror and the other didn't. The difference was on the good day she had a good nap (being tired increases night terrors) and ate cholesterol (supports the developing nervous system and night terrors are related to an underdeveloped nervous system) and the other day she didn't.
We're now tracking when and how long she naps and making sure she has cholesterol.
But night terrors are a phase and kids grow out of it. So it isn't really the fact that they happened at all that was aggravating me to pieces, it was the fact that I'm then up for 2-3 extra hours dealing with a toddler who doesn't want to go to bed again. And the feelings of helplessness as the screaming continues. And the feelings of guilt about "giving in" to demands for food, TV, going outside, etc, etc, etc, in the face of a screaming child (hey! there's a plus side, we weren't training her to scream for what she wants cause she had no idea she was doing it). And the feelings of anger (and then guilt) that she'd reject our attempts to comfort her and throw away, literally on many occasions, food we'd prepared as fast as possible just for her.
Tonight, when we spotted her eyes opening, instead of rushing to talk to her, we waited. And sure enough they had the glazed look that meant she wasn't really asleep. We took her into bed, in a darkened room in hopes that she'd go back fully to sleep, but by that point she'd already started crying and yelling. We laid her down in bed and lay near her. We patted her and kissed her from time to time, but she reacted badly to that, so we went to just suggesting nursing whenever the crying seemed to pause a bit. 7 minutes after the yelling started, she nursed for about 5 minutes then rolled over--30 minutes later she's still sleeping peacefully.
Infinitely less stressful. "Accept the things I cannot change."
The next thing we're going to try, on days when she hasn't had a decent nap, is waking her up about 1.5 hours after she goes to sleep, according to some sources, that averts incipient night terrors . I really hope this works with a 2.5 day train ride coming up at the end of the month (not to mention a month as houseguests!)
We were lucky enough to recently have two virtually identical days where one day had a night terror and the other didn't. The difference was on the good day she had a good nap (being tired increases night terrors) and ate cholesterol (supports the developing nervous system and night terrors are related to an underdeveloped nervous system) and the other day she didn't.
We're now tracking when and how long she naps and making sure she has cholesterol.
But night terrors are a phase and kids grow out of it. So it isn't really the fact that they happened at all that was aggravating me to pieces, it was the fact that I'm then up for 2-3 extra hours dealing with a toddler who doesn't want to go to bed again. And the feelings of helplessness as the screaming continues. And the feelings of guilt about "giving in" to demands for food, TV, going outside, etc, etc, etc, in the face of a screaming child (hey! there's a plus side, we weren't training her to scream for what she wants cause she had no idea she was doing it). And the feelings of anger (and then guilt) that she'd reject our attempts to comfort her and throw away, literally on many occasions, food we'd prepared as fast as possible just for her.
Tonight, when we spotted her eyes opening, instead of rushing to talk to her, we waited. And sure enough they had the glazed look that meant she wasn't really asleep. We took her into bed, in a darkened room in hopes that she'd go back fully to sleep, but by that point she'd already started crying and yelling. We laid her down in bed and lay near her. We patted her and kissed her from time to time, but she reacted badly to that, so we went to just suggesting nursing whenever the crying seemed to pause a bit. 7 minutes after the yelling started, she nursed for about 5 minutes then rolled over--30 minutes later she's still sleeping peacefully.
Infinitely less stressful. "Accept the things I cannot change."
The next thing we're going to try, on days when she hasn't had a decent nap, is waking her up about 1.5 hours after she goes to sleep, according to some sources, that averts incipient night terrors . I really hope this works with a 2.5 day train ride coming up at the end of the month (not to mention a month as houseguests!)
