Thursday, September 10, 2009

Night Terrors

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to a horrible scream and running in your kids room to see them sitting straight up in their bed screaming, crying, shaking, sweating, just completely upset. Well that's what has happened to us for the past week. Tanner has been doing this every night for the past week in the middle of the night. Usually around 1am. It scared me to death the first night. When he does it its like he is in a trance of some kind. It's really weird! I called the doctor on Monday and she said that it sounded like he is experiencing night terrors. The thing that concerns her the most is that night terrors generally only last a few minutes and they normally don't happen every night. Tanners last for a good hour and have happened every night for the past week except Tuesday. We've done some research online and with talking to the doctor she said you can normally pinpoint what is causing them and get them to stop. In Tanner's case I think we have it narrowed down to lack of sleep. One of the common times kids have night terrors is when they are overly tired. Well Tanner started having them when we were on vacation and he wasn't getting in the bed until 10 or 11. The only night he didn't have them was Tuesday night when he and Ryleigh went to bed at 8. Last night they resumed because we had church and he didn't go to bed until 10. Hopefully we can get his sleeping schedule set and get this under control. If they don't stop after a week of cutting out all cartoons that involve bad guys (spiderman, bolt, batman..) and going to bed early then we will be referred to a child psychologist or psychiatrist, I can't remember which one she said...which one can't write prescriptions? Anyway so hopefully we can get this fixed. Keep him in your prayers or actually keep me in your prayers. He doesn't even remember that they happened and I'm the one scared out of my mind at 1 am!!

3 comments:

Erica said...

hey i found you over at kelly's blog, saw you were at gulf shores the same time as her, & thought i'd stop by cuz we were there at the same time too! :) and i saw your pics, looks like we were at the outlet mall on the same (CRAZY) day. how funny! what adorable kids you have. are they twins?

my oldest son has had night terrors before. they really are very scary. his usually last for a half hour or so, and we've found his are either from lack of sleep or sometimes when he has a fever.

anyways, just thought i'd stop & say hi!

Trina said...

Wow how scary! I've been having trouble with Rayna being afraid to sleep without me in her room (even though her brother is in there with her) but nothing like night terrors. I pray it resolves quickly!

Anonymous said...

Tanner, you and Ryleigh did so good Friday nite when you spent the nite with Uncle Terry & me. I was trying to prepare myself for your "Night Terrors" I even slept with ya'll... You slept all nite, Ryleigh on the other hand would sit straight up in the bed and would flop over in her sleep. Needless to say I did not sleep very well.. but that's all part of it. I would do it again!

Luv you, Aunt Melissa