The last two nights Natalie has woken up crying in her bed around 3-4 a.m. Usually if she wakes up in the middle of the night she'll just fuss a little and go back to sleep but this has been all out crying, not just fussiness, that she doesn't calm from until I go up and rock with her for a few minutes. Then she's fine and asks to go back to her bed to go to sleep (well, asks by saying "nigh nigh"). Nothing else seems wrong and she wakes up in the morning in a fine mood. Do you think this could be what I've heard referred to as night terrors? Anyone else's toddler have this happen?
Re: Night terrors?
J has night terrors, except he goes from completely silent asleep to an all out scream. It startles me every time & I literally jump out of bed! At least she'll go back to sleep in her bed, if J has them he will NOT go back into his crib. One of us has to sleep with him b/c if we put him back in his crib he will scream the rest of the night, which is just not worth it for anyone. It's sort of hard to describe, but this screaming is like an "I'm really scared" scream rather than an "I'm mad & trying to get my way" scream, if you know what I mean.
Hope it gets better soon!
I think you're right. Eli has had night terrors before and they are very different from what you're describing. With NT, they really aren't awake, even though their eyes are open. It's very scary. And they'll fight you and not want to be held. The first time it happened we didn't know what was going on or how to handle them, and we did all the wrong things. Afterwards I did some research and figured it out and he doesn't have them anymore. It was like the lights were on, but nobody was home. And he didn't recognize us at all.
Sometimes when Eli is teething he'll scream out like that suddenly too. But he can usually put himself back to sleep after he finds his paci, or I can easily get him back down. It usually coincides with teething, so that's why I think it's that and not nightmares. I'm not sure what you can do if you think it's nightmares. But babycenter helped me alot with the terrors, so I'm sure they have good advice about nightmares too.