Night Terrors...

Sometimes, being a mama is a lot harder than it is other times. Last night was one of the tough times.

James has never been a fantastic sleeper. I joke with my mom that he's actually my sister's child because she's never been a good sleeper either. He wakes up at light noises, hasn't ever really slept through the night, and doesn't nap for all that long. I attribute it just to his make-up and personality because I DID try all of the "be loud" tactics they tell you about. (Mary Beth told me a few weekends ago that she can actually vacuum while Sarah Beth is asleep and I couldn't believe it!) I think James is really worried about missing something.

Anyway, last night he stirred and cried around 10:30. Eddie was already asleep and I don't just jump up and go see what's wrong with him immediately. (Eddie does. That's his problem.) It persisted, though, so I went to check. He was sitting up with his eyes closed and his paci in his mouth. Usually crying at night is about his paci. He didn't have his wubbie, though, so I handed that to him and he flopped over and went back to sleep.

About 30 minutes later, though, there was blood curdling SCREAMING. Distressed screaming. Scared screaming. I wondered if I would walk in on someone attacking him. As it turned out, he was sitting straight up in the bed with his eyes open. He wouldn't stop screaming. I picked him up and he continued to scream. He was thrashing around (almost convulsing...that's what made me so nervous) and I couldn't get him to calm down. I have read before that you shouldn't try to wake up a child that's doing this (and have since read it's because it scares them) so I sat in the rocker with him and just calmly whispered his name. When he calmed down a little bit I walked with him out into the hallway and into our room. He wasn't screaming anymore but he was still crying and sniffling. (I don't really know how to describe what he was doing...you know how when a person has cried and cried they can't control their sniffling and breathing...that's what he was doing.) So we snuggled in my bed for a bit and then I put him back in his bed.

He's done this several times before (the screaming in his sleep) but it usually isn't as bad as it was last night. It was scary! I'm convinced he's having night terrors even though he seems to be young to have them. I've wondered before if that's what was going on, but that seemed to definitely be it last night. I actually posted on Facebook right after it happened and was relieved to know that it's not terribly uncommon! I had at least five people tell me that their children experienced them as well.

To add some humor to this, Eddie woke up when I put James in our bed and we talked for a minute. This morning I said something to him about it and he said "Oh, yeah. I couldn't get him to stop crying!" I looked at him and said "You didn't get up. You weren't trying to get him to stop crying." He looked confused and said, "Yes I did! I rocked him for twenty minutes!" Turns out he meant at 4 AM he rocked him. He was "awake" for the night terror last night but doesn't have any memory of it! Think we get our weird sleep patterns honest? :)