On Night Terrors

Sundays are usually a busy day for us. We go to church and socialize with our friends from the parish. After which, we go to my parents' house for our weekly family time. On a typical Sunday, we're out by noon and back by close to midnight.

We didn't realize how bad our Sunday routine was until we recently noticed a pattern in Zack's Sunday night wakings. He'd usually fall asleep on my parents bed, wake up when we're strapping him into the carseat, stay barely awake for the 10 minute drive then pass out for the night on the crib. Since we're unable to follow our night-night routine (bath, lotion, sleepy music, books, bedtime prayer) on Sundays, he'd wake up crying several times throughout the night. and We'd try to soothe him back to sleep, either with his pacifier or by rocking him in our arms. Normally, that would do it, and he'd go back to bed for about two hours or so before the whole things would start all over again.

Last Sunday was different. He woke up screaming his guts out. I picked him up, tried the pacifier, rocked him to sleep, attempted to sing him a song and pulled all the tricks out of the hat. Nothing worked. He kept crying and kicking and wiggling. A few minutes into this, it suddenly hit me that he might be having some sort of night terror. I remembered reading about this online and about what caregivers may do when this occurs -- nothing! Kids experiencing night terrors look awake but are actually asleep and unable to respond to soothing techniques. I just held him in my arms and sat on the bed until the episode ended. After about 11 minutes or so, he fell asleep again, as if nothing happened!

Lesson learned: Do not stay out too late and religiously follow our night-night routine. This will help him unwind properly and let go of the super tiring day (or in our case, super tiring weekend).