Night terrors or normal baby sleep??

[Monarchgrrl]

DD is 10 weeks old and since about 2 weeks old she will scream bloody murder, like horror movie scream, while asleep. Or she will cry and cry and be completely asleep. Once we finally get her awake she is happy and smiling and quiet, probably wondering why the heck we are standing over her all concerned. I've asked my few mommy friends but none said that their babies did this. She doesn't do it every time she sleeps, but almost. We never know if we should wake her up or let her scream in her sleep. WWYD? So...not normal, right? Is it night terrors or bad dreams? Anything we can do about it?

[kl5]

My 4 month old does the same thing. He also laughs in his sleep. I have no advice, but will be watching for replies!

[aumismommy]

My son did this too - we would be begging him to just wake up completely and then as soon as he did he would be grinning.  He also had little sad faces and whimpers when he was obviously asleep as well as grins and chuckles.  I have no explaination but he did grow out of the screaming in his sleep around 4 months.  Sometimes he'll still cry when he wakes up every now and then but snaps out of it right when we pick him up.

[slgt]

2 thoughts come to mind:

Babies that young have very immature nervous systems. It's possible that your baby's night-crying is just her brain "practicing" one of the things that it knows how to do. I'm 100% making this up, but it seems like a reasonable possibility.

The other thought is gas, but it seems unlikely if your DD is happy once you wake her up. Unless she toots as soon as she wakes up, in which case gas is a distinct possibility.

[Blessed1]

This happened only one time with my little one when she was 12 weeks old.  She was sleeping peacefully next to me (I was reading) and then suddenly she screamed bloody murder.  I've never heard such a high pitched, awful scream from anyone besides those girls in those scary movies. It was so high pitched it freaked me out!!. My 90lb Labrador retriever jumped up and started barking and running in circles!! I immediately jumped up and put my arm on her chest to see what was wrong but her eyes were still closed and she was still screaming!. I gently shook her and was about to pick her up when her eyes opened and she gave me the biggest smile ever. I immediately picked her up and held her close to me and I started sobbing (yea, it scared me that much). It was the scariest feeling ever. It took me a good hour to finally calm down and let go of that awful dreadful feeling. My baby girl on the other hand was happy and back to normal the minute she opened her big eyes.

Not sure why it happened, but it never happened again..thank goodness!

I know I wasn't much help, but I just wanted to share.

[sk8boarder15]

My ds, now 3.5 months occasionally does the same thing!! He will scream or cry or laugh. Unless it's a really bad cry or scream I just leave him. I hope he grows out of it as it scares me and wakem me up! My pedi is amazing so I'll ask him about it at his next appt.

[Summersquash]

DD used to do this ALL the time - like every other night when she was an infant.  It was horrible.    I asked the pediatrician about it at her appointment and she said that young babies didn't necessarily have the development yet to have night terrors.  (DD did have reflux as a baby and was quite unhappy until we got her on Prevacid and cut out all dairy, fwiw.)

One thing that helped us immensely was that I started to cuddle her up really close when this happened.  She would start to cry in her sleep and I would pull her close to me and just hold her, sometimes gently rubbing her back.  Or I'd lay on my back and let her sleep on my chest for a bit.  This would often help her calm down - whether it was physical proximity to me or whether it was moving her around enough to slightly disrupt her sleep cycle, I'm not sure.