Night Terrors--What I Know Now

Shew! Last night was rough. Addison peed in the bed and we had to get up and change her sheets and then Landry had a 30-minute night terror. Some of you out there unfortunately have experience night terrors with your children and know how awful they can be. For those of you who aren't familiar with them, let me fill you in just a bit. I only wish someone had told me a little about them before we experienced them with Addison for the first time. I want to say that Addison was a little over a year old when she had her first night terror. She had been sick for several days with fever, but the night after her fever broke she woke up in the middle of the night screaming. When we went to check on her, she was flailing around in complete hysterics. I wasn't sure what was wrong, so I picked her up to rock her but she remained hysterical. She was kicking, screaming, arching her back and seemed like she was in pain or having a seizure of some sort. Being a new mother at the time, I tried gas drops, Orajel for possible cutting teeth, but nothing seemed to help. After 30 minutes of this, she finally opened her eyes all the way, took a deep breath and then laid her head down on my shoulder and fell sound asleep. It wasn't until the next morning that I realized that we had experienced a night terror. Night terrors are similar to nightmares, but a lot more severe in that children can get fairly aggressive. They can last anywhere from 20-40 minutes. Fortunately, she only had two more after that (and it's been quite a while since she's had one), but I began noticing that she was more apt to have them if she was overtired or after a bout of sickness. Luckily, based on those experiences, we weren't surprised when Landry woke up in hysterics one night around 16 months old after a week of being sick. He's also had a few more since then and now we know just to be patient, comfort him, don't try to wake him up and pray that it won't last long. It seems that most of the time children do outgrow these and it's not something that happens every night, but they can be scary if you aren't familiar with them. I just wish someone had told me about them before I had to experience them for myself.