Ok….yes, normally I would agree with WisconsinMom and Ann, but the part I didn’t maybe share about Tommy waking up is he is having Night Terrors. He isn’t just fussing he is screaming like someone is murdering him. It takes a while to clam him down, the peds says night terrors are normal developmentally for this age and he will outgrown them. The part I have to get better about is once he is calm again, to leave the room. But he will cry, but I think he might still be scared.
I feel for him because I still to this day will have nightmares. I will bolt up in bed and scream and what scared me stays with me for a bit. So that is why I hate to leave him. I don’t know I struggle with it either way.
Garrett used to have Night Terrors, too, thankfully, he hasn’t had one in several weeks, but the first one (when he was 9mo) scared the crap out of me. Normally when he has them, I just do what I can to keep him from hurting himself and sing to him…although I always keep him in his bed. I found that helped more than picking him up. I always wanted to snatch him up and hold him to me, or even take him to bed with me, but I never wanted to risk waking him up. Thankfully, the older he gets, the farther apart the episodes get. HUGS to you!! I know how heartbreaking they are!!
Oh, that is different, of course you’d want to comfort him. I guess the hard part would be knowing when he’s calmed down enough, really, to be able to leave him and let him cry. I wouldn’t know what to do.
Actually, with night terrors, there aren’t really awake when they scream. My son had them too. And I read everything I could find about them. You could set a clock to him. Every night at 11pm, he’d wake up screaming. It has something to do with their sleep cycles and this is actually when they go from the very deep sleep to a lighter sleep. Either their screaming wakes themselves up or the parent coming into the room wakes them up. As Kelios said, it’s best not to pick them up…..even though you really want to comfort the little buggers…but to try to ease them back down to sleep again without actually rocking them, etc. And yes, in time, they grow out of it and will sleep through the night. It’s just a long haul when you’re going through it. My son is now almost 15 and sleeps 11 hours a night!
{{{{hugs to you both}}}}