Some nights, you just know that you’re in for a rough one.
That was Pierre and me on Sunday when we put Benjamin to bed. He had been complaining about growing pains in his right knee. Poor kiddo. We heated up a heat pillow (the microwavable kind), massaged his legs, tucked him into bed, and crossed our fingers.
No luck.
Around 10:30 p.m., just as Pierre and I had fallen asleep, we heard Ben. He was hysterical, crying to the point of hyperventilating, and was in a sweat. His eyes were half-open, he seemed awake, but all our attempts to wake him up fully, failed miserably. He was completely disoriented, and very upset. At one point, I tried to sit him up, propped against my knees. His body flopped back onto the bed like a wet noodle.
Was it a bad dream? A scary noise? Did his knee still hurt? Did he have to go to the bathroom? All our questions were ignored. Benjamin wasn’t hearing us. He was looking at us through half-closed eyes, but wasn’t really seeing that we were there. It was like he was in a daze, a trance, in another world entirely.
Honestly, I found the whole episode more than a little scary. My kids have done some crazy stuff, but I’d never seen anything like this. And the whole time, Benjamin cried big, gulping, gasping sobs as though his whole world was ending.
Finally, after about 20 minutes or so, Pierre and I managed to wake Ben up enough to give him some kiddie Advil, just in case growing pains were at work. We calmed Ben down, and Pierre read him a book. We tucked him back in, and told him to dream about what he wanted for breakfast the next morning. He said he wanted an egg.
Guess what? Come the next morning, Benjamin had no recollection of wanting eggs for breakfast, of Pierre and me being in his room, or even of being awake the night before at all.
So, what to do? I consulted some members of my Mommy Network (my girlfriends are the best!). One friend said that her son went through something similar, waking up several nights in a row, and that it sounded as though Benjamin, like her son, had had a night terror. Now, I studied night terrors in my last class as part of a lecture on sleep, but only so far as to know that they occur in children and are a disruption to normal sleep patterns (no kidding!). To learn more, I consulted Dr. Internet and Googled the term.
No doubt about it. Benjamin had experienced a night terror. They can occur when kids are stressed or anxious, sick, overly tired, or have a change in routine. And it makes sense. He’d been fighting a cold, and we had had an unusually busy weekend. Not to mention those growing pains being a source of stress. And the transition to going to school five morning at week. Adds up to a lot going on. His CNS was on overload.
Thankfully, since Sunday, Benjamin has been back to normal, sleeping like a log. I swear, when that kid sleeps a train could pass through the house without waking him.
Want to know more? Here are some helpful links on night terrors from WebMD and KidsHealth.
Have any of your kids ever had a night terror? What did you do to help?
xo Naomi
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