Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Night Terrors - an update

Well, the fact that I have to give an update means that we are still dealing with Paige's Night Terrors.  I think we are at 3ish years of her having them.

It seems that we go through spurts of her having them a few times a week and her having them every night for weeks.

Usually she starts crying with a terror at around 10:00pm and then again at 11:30pm.  Sometimes she even has a third "episode" around 12:30am.  It takes us an average of 10 minutes to get her calmed down and sleeping peacefully.  Most of the time now we don't have to actually wake her up, but just comfort her until they stop.  Sometimes they are so bad and she is so hysterical that we do turn on lights and try to wake her up out of them.

Typically she starts fussing in her bed, gets up, and comes to find us.  Crying the whole time and calling for us.  The other night, we were in bed already and she made her all the way to the back of the basement bedroom......in the pitch black, before we found her.  If you are unfamiliar with our house, she had to go down 2 full flights of stairs and  through 2 living rooms to get to the guest room.  We don't leave lights on, so there was no light.  Scary!

Mark found her one night in Lainey's room saying something, but totally asleep.

We are putting chains on all the doors.  Apparently night terrors and sleep walking go hand in hand.  I do not want to worry about not hearing her and her getting outside.  So far it just seems that she comes looking for Mark and I, but its not worth the risk.

She still has no recollection of them, ever.  In fact, when I pray for her at night, I intentionally do not call them by name.  But I wasn't thinking a couple nights ago and prayed that she wouldn't have any night terrors.  She asked me what those were.  I pretty much told her they were bad dreams.

Please continue to lift her up in the evening with us.  I want to be able to let her go to sleepovers someday without having to worry about her having them.  But also for her (and us) to have peaceful nights of sleep.




1 comment:

Kathy said...

Oh Mel, I'm so sorry for you guys! I wish that wasn't the case! We will pray for Paige and you and Mark too. I'm so glad she at least doesn't remember, but I can totally see where the sleep walking is a new level of scary!