Waking up crying and screaming at night

Ugh. It started a few months ago and it's happened probably 10 times since... DD just wakes up crying at night. We go in once or twice, comfort her, then say it's time to sleep and half the time she will just start crying again as soon as we leave... It's why we used to do CIO but now usually it only lasts a couple minutes and she falls asleep... But tonight she's woken up 5 times since 11.30pm, we went back in twice, then her brother was up too so we did the night routine again (night light and music), it didn't help, she kept crying every 10 minutes and the last time she was literally screaming at us in a kind of rage... but we didn't go back in, as obviously it's not helping at all and only waking DS up (how her cries are not waking up but us opening the door do, I don't get). I think she's finally settled down now... it's almost 2.

It happened last week during our vacation too, woke her brother up and after that they wouldn't go back to sleep at all and we ended up driving home at 4am with almost no sleep...

She's not sick at all. They've been sleeping through pretty regularly since 7 months. I have no idea why she does it... she doesn't talk well yet so she's not telling us anything either. Any idea what it could be? It's driving me crazy and I really have no idea how to handle it... I was thinking it could be because she wears night braces at night but nope, she took them off tonight apparently...

 

do they have their 2 year molars yet? if they don't it could be that...I know you're saying she's not sick but is it possible she has an earache? sometimes there are no outward signs other than restlessness...

 

Yeah they do... I don't get it

 

Alice has night terrors sometimes, they sound a bit like that. Well, actually, that depends on what kind of night terrors. For the ones we've dubbed "night nuisances" they're like that, crying, can be consoled a little, then cry again, then consoled, then cry for up to an hour. The whole time she doesn't talk (that's one way that we know it's a terror as opposed to a nightmare). The "Night Terror from the Exorcist Movie" is the other type. That's where she's screaming bloody murder, crawling into the entertainment center, banging her head on things, rolling her eyes back in her head, spinning her head around, and absolutely non-consolable.

How soon after falling asleep does E's happen? Alice is very nearly like clockwork, 2 hours after falling asleep, so if it happens between 10:00 and 11:00, we know for sure that it's a night terror of some sort and the only thing we can do is help her keep from hurting herself. Thankfully Roycie sleeps through all of these.


ETA They piggyback on each other sometimes, so she could have a night terror, then two hours later another night terror, then after two more hours another one.

 

We are also going through this. My twins just turned 3 on 12/31. We have come to the conclusion that DS is having night terrors, and he goes in spurts. It has been atleast a couple months since he has had one, and we are going on our second night of them now. He usually has them for about a week, either every night or we might get lucky and skip a night.
DD is a totally different issue. I am not sure what her problem is. She requires me to lay with her until she falls asleep, and we have one HUGE battle if DH tries to lay with her. It is horrible. I honestly think she has a fear of being alone. She can be asleep and I will get up and leave her room and the minute I shut her door she is awake and is crying. They both woke up the other night and came in our bed (they sleep in seperate rooms), I finally got up and went to her bed because that was easier than dealing with the battle. I wasn't in her bed 3 minutes and she woke up and came looking for me.

I am interested to see what everyone else says too..

April

 

I don't have a lot of advice, just sympathy. We're going through a 2 week streak of night-waking (mostly Jack, but sometimes Nate too); they're waking anywhere from 1-5 times per night and I'm exhausted. :faint: It started before the holiday, but I think it might be a wicked combo of schedule disruptions, excitement, molars, and diarrhea from too much rich food.

Jack has also been sleeping way too much in the daytime during the holiday when we were off (sleeping until almost 10am, then 3-4 hour naps), so I think he's been getting *too* much sleep. I put both boys back on our strict schedule starting yesterday, gave Jack some ibuprofen last night, and he only woke once so I'm hoping he'll be back STTN by the end of the week. ardon:

Good luck; I hope you find something that works!

 

I know when my son wakes up at night (pretty much every night) it's out of habit. He'll have one bad night with a valid reason - bad dream, over-tired when we put him down, etc. And no matter how we handle it, the next night he will always expect the same treatment at around exactly the same time. With him, one bad night will lead to weeks or months of frustration and sleep deprivation. But this has been the case with him from baby up, which sounds different from your daughter. CIO is the only thing that has ever broken the cycle. The more we go in, the more we prolong it and he will continue to wake up. If we try to lay down with him once or bring him to bed with us just once, he will scream about it every night after that he wants to sleep with us. We did CIO a couple nights ago - the first time since he's been out of a crib. It was the worst - listening to him screaming for mommy, telling me he was stuck, and trying to get the door open. It took an hour for him to calm down, and then he proceeded to have a conversation with his stuffed animals about his door being locked. It broke my heart. So hopefully your situation is not as bad. Or, if she's still in a crib, you can figure it out before she gets moved to a bed.

Could she be overtired? Those are the nights that usually start the cycle for my son. He'll usually wake up inconsolable, not knowing where he is or that we are there. Once we finally get him to calm down, he just keeps waking up - or not sleeping at all.

Maybe growing pains? Although 10 times in 3 months seems like an excessive amount of growth spurts. I'd probably try tylenol or motrin anyway if it was the first night, and they kept waking repeatedly.

Did you mention they started preschool recently? Did it coincide with the time these night wakings started?

 

It's pretty much the same here Denise, although I'm not sure why she started it a few months ago. Then she got a cold and it got worse, we ended up having to do CIO a couple nights, then she stopped for a month and here we are again. She might be tired, but it's hard to tell as they usually refuse to go to bed, and even then, take up to an hour to fall asleep. I can't even imagine what it would be if we were not in cribs.

She started those 'episodes' in September, and preschool just a month ago (it's only 1.5 hour twice a week too). I'm quite sure it's not night terror as she's 'responsive' when it happens (and we've dealt with a couple of those in the past... yeah, they suck). She's known to have full blown tantrums too so I'm sure her temper accounts for some of her rage when we don't come in...

Could be because of our Christmas trip, but we came back a week ago and she's been fine since...

 

She's doing it again :headbang: Crying and screaming for 10 minutes every time we put her down for nap or at bedtime, and waking up in the middle of the night...

Seriously, what can it be? It's driving us nuts and I have no idea... She's not even trying to say anything, just crying and calling me...

 

have you had her ears checked by the pedi? Abby was (and still is) notorious for getting an earache in the middle of the night, and coming out of her room crying, inconsolable and also just confused and restless - no fever and no other outward signs of being sick (cold, cough etc...)

could she be cold or too warm? ummm....I'm trying to think of what would set my kids off at that age...

we also go through cycles where Ian will wake up in the middle of the night and come in our room for several days straight and then will go back to sleeping on his own...he doesn't cry though...

 

One of my DDs had night terrors like this from age 2-4 (still gets them now and then). The key was it was about 2 hours after falling asleep. No solution, she has mostly outgrown them.

The other thoughts that caused my kids to wake at night were:

overtired
bad dream
teething
cold/hot
earache
have to go potty (somehow one of mine often had to poop at night at that age!)
missing a lovey/bed toy
wanting attention


In order to make sure it was not for attention== if we had made sure it was nothing else, we put her in another room and let her be mad/etc- rather than feed into the attention she wanted (mom or dad). Eventually she stopped.