Night Terrors

Oh what a night we had.

Let's back up a little bit, shall we?  It all started after I picked my son up from my parents house.  They were so gracious to watch him overnight so that the hubs and I could go out for our anniversary.  He was in a great mood!   A perfect mood!  I brought him home and had planned on getting him ready for nap right away since it was about that time.  But he had other plans.

He ran around the house, played, and did some bootie shakin' to Elvis.  That's normal, right?  We didn't force the nap issue (although we attempted to put him down on 3 seperate occassions) because we hadn't seen him all night and he was in such a good mood.  ( I have the best video on my phone, but can't figure out how to post it....can someone tell me how?)

So needless to say, yesterday was a no nap Sunday.  Boy, are we regretting that decision!

We put him to bed around 8:00 and he crashed pretty hard.  Once we were all snuggled in our beds, we awoke 3 hours later to a SCREAMING child.  I gave it a minute to see if he would settle himself, but no luck.  I walked into his room thinking that he just couldn't find his paci or something, but he was asleep in the fetal postion with his little butt up in the air.

How can he be asleep and screaming at the same time?

I have heard about night terrors from other moms, but never in my wildest dreams did I think that it would be as heartbreaking as it was.

I rubbed his back and reassured him that Mommy was there, but that did nothing to calm him.  I remembered my mom friends telling me not to wake them up while they are having the terrors.  That they would come out of it, go back to sleep, and not remember it in the morning.  But how can I just leave my child alone in his crib screaming bloody murder. 

I felt helpless.  I finally did pick him up and tried to rock him with no luck.

The weirdest part of it all is that his eyes were open as if he were awake, but he was not alert.  He was really restless and just cried, screamed, and did some more crying and screaming.

So, there we were using Dr. Google at midnight trying to figure out what to do.  Anything.  We were searching for answers.  We wanted it to stop.  It's true that once you are a parent, there is a natural instinct to never want anything bad to happen to your child.  My literally heart ached for him.

He finally calmed down and went back to sleep after about 45 minutes.  According to Dr. Google, these episodes can be caused from lack of sleep, over stimulation, traveling, change in schedule, etc....  There is nothing that you can do to get them out of it:  just reassure them that you are there and make sure that they don't hurt themselves.  Apparently sometimes the children thrash about in their beds.  I thank God that Owen didn't do that.  oh my.  I probably would have lost it, loaded him up in the car, and drove straight to the ER.

Needless to say, it was one hell of a stressful night for all of us.  He seems to be fine today like nothing ever happened.  I on the other hand have droppy eyes and am still trying to recover from the anxiety and heartache that it caused.  Apparently, the parent will become more traumatized than the child will ever be.

Any moms out there ever experience this?  Any tips?