2 YO Waking up every night at 11PM

Paris05

My DS  is all of a sudden waking up at 11PM every night for last few weeks screaming.

We have to go in there and rock him to calm him down. We have tried just letting him be but he screams so hard we cave and go in there.

Could this be nightmares? He is going down awake and falling asleep on his own.

He also has had a slight cough and some nasal congestion but I highly doubt that is causing this night wakening.

ironmommy

My DD was doing this a few weeks ago, except the screaming and crying would go on every few hours through the night. She usually wasn't fully awake, and I would just pat her back to get her back to sleep. My guess was nightmares, and I would think the same with yours. But really, who knows?

Cytina

S went through a phase like this too, except he was waking up between 2am and 3am.  It lasted a couple of weeks; never figured out the cause though.

mavs_girl07

DD did this a couple of months ago, and it was also always around 11:00-11:15.  Every night, and it lasted several weeks.  She'd cry like she was terrified and stand in her crib screaming for me.  I'd ask her what happened, but she couldn't tell me and just wanted to be held for a minute.  It eventually just stopped happening, we assumed it was nightmares but still don't really know. 

LucyPevensie

There is nothing wrong with rocking a terrified two year old and helping him fall back to sleep.  It's a shame the bump CIO trend has any mom thinking that it's "bad" to comfort a frightened 2 year old at night.  Follow your instincts. 

kyfirewife

Can you sit in his room one night & watch / listen?

We've had similar things happen twice.

#1 - DD kept waking up around 10:30pm, terrified. Would refuse to go back to her bed and eventually fought going to bed at all. Finally, one night we were sitting with her by her bed trying to get her to go to sleep and the 10:30pm time came by. A huge truck went by. The lights (we didn't have shades up yet) came right in her window, plus the "strange", loud noise. That's what was scaring her. We explained to her what it was, got the blackout shades up ASAP. Problem solved.

#2 - DD started waking at 5:15am, nearly every morning, wanting to get up for the day. I'd usually convince her to crawl in bed with me and could get her to finish sleeping in our bed, but she wouldn't go back to her bed. We finally figured out that she was hearing DH's shower as he got ready for work. DH started shutting DD's door when he got up (we keep it open overnight), and shut the bathroom door, to drown out the sound. Problem solved.

I think as they get older, they just start becoming more aware of their surroundings, and if they're not in a deep sleep, then these sounds & things really interrupt their sleep.

Hope you figure it out. Whatever it is.

GL!