TERRIBLE night terrors when DS has to pee

[missnoodlesmom]

My son started having night terrors about 4 months ago. At first it seemed to be when he got over-heated. But now they seem to revolve around him having to pee. He's 2y5months and has been PTed for about 5 months. For some reason he will have a crazy fit when he has to pee instead of a. peeing in his pull up or b. wake up and ask for help or go to the bathroom himself. These fits will last awhile - from 5 - 30 minutes and they are getting more frequent (at least 1x a night) and more severe (he smashed his face against the wall 2 nights ago resulting in a bloody nose) as time goes on. I wake him up to take him to the bathroom but it's not enough....he cries out for water and wants to drink a ton before bed. (just to rule it out, I don't think he has diabetes, he just seems to be exceptionally thirsty at this time) I've never wanted to withhold liquids because I think it's pretty mean to a kid to hold back a drink when they are really thirsty. The weirdest thing is that once he pees, he will literally re-pass out at the potty. It's just getting him there - he will scream, thrash around, hit us, pinch, try to bite - he's literally having a complete fit. Nothing in his waking hours compares to this and it's, frankly, extremely scary and really wears me down. I am getting anxiety just thinking about it.
So does anyone have any suggestions, or just please tell me that I'm not the only one dealing with this?

[missnoodlesmom]

Bumping and hoping I'm really not the only person who has gone through this.

[dahlialia]

I haven't dealt with this particular issue, but we did deal with night terrors a lot. Could it be that he is reaching that "need to pee" point when he is in a deep part of the sleep cycle? Is there any consistency to when in the night it happens? I'm wondering if you could maybe circumvent it by waking him to pee earlier.

[crunchy_mommy]

I haven't dealt with this (yet!) but I do remember reading something about waking them up just before they'd normally start screaming. Or if he's not doing it at a predictable time, just pick a time to wake him up at.

You could also try to offer lots more liquids during the day, maybe that will cut down on any excessive pre-bedtime drinking?

[missnoodlesmom]

Thank you for the replies. We have been trying to wake him up before the screaming starts and take him to the bathroom to pee while he is still kind of asleep. That has only succeeded in pushing back the terrors to a later time in the night. Maybe I need to start setting my alarm for every 2 hours all night???? UGH. He's never been a good sleeper.....I'm trying to decide if this is worse than the infant stage. At least when he was an infant I could plug him up with a boobie

I really wonder why the feeling of needing to pee is so crazy for him in the middle of the night - he has NO bathroom issues (besides wanting to use too much TP haha) during waking hours.

[noilate]

My 4 1/2 year old son does the same thing, wakes up crying needing to pee.  He won't come down from his bed himself, so my husband will carry him to the potty with my son crying, screaming that he doesn't want to, but then once he pees he stops all the undesirable behavior and goes back to sleep.  It's really odd and we're trying to make sense of it and trying to see a common thread as to when this happens but haven't really come to any conclusion.  Have you?

[cameragirl]

DD is 5.5 and still will start crying and fussing if she's in a deep sleep and has a full bladder. Sometimes she'll get up and try to find the bathroom, but gets confused and ends up in the living room. She isn't really awake, and just knows that she doesn't feel good. She'll say her tummy hurts. We figured out after a few times to put her on the toilet, and that solves the problem. She's still a little upset, but calms down once her bladder is emptied and we're getting her back in bed. It seems to get worse when she's going through a growth spurt, and for whatever reason, having her adjusted by our chiropractor seems to help.