Sleep/Night Terrors

*Let me just warn you right now, this is long. And may be boring. I apologize, but remember, this is my journal too.

Have any of you ever had to deal with this before with a child? It is one of the most sad, confusing, scary/freaky, frustrating things ever! A couple of months ago Noah comes into our room in the middle of the night just bawling. He doesn't do this often, but it was nothing we were really concerned about. As we are trying to talk to him and figure out what is wrong and why he is crying, the thought crossed my mind that he wasn't even hearing us and that he was sleepwalking. This is the frustrating part. He won't answer. He can't answer. I tell Colby what I think is happening and we try to wake him up. It doesn't work. After what feels like forever, we watch him 'come to' and he looks around (the confused part) then looks at us wondering why he's in our room, and sometimes starts to laugh. We get mad, take him to bed. I would always ask him the next day if he remembered what happened the night before, and he looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about and would tell me no.

This actually started when he started not taking naps anymore. Like he was so tired from the day, but not tired enough to nap, so this happens. During the first week we had at least 2 or 3 episodes. Each one a little different. Crying every time, yelling at people, and mostly just scared out of his mind. After talking to a couple of people and reading some great articles, we decided this is what it was. Sad.

We have gone quite a while without anything like this happening, and have been very relieved. Almost feeling like it was a short phase and we were through it. Until last night. I have no idea what time it all started. All of a sudden we hear him coming into our room, crying. You could hear the fear in his voice. "Someone just hit me in my bed." He was obviously dreaming, and we have gotten to the point where we can tell if it's a nightmare, or night terror. This was definitely a nightmare. Colby took him to his room, turned the light on, checked things out. Did the usual 'put back to bed' routine. A couple minutes later Noah is up turning lights on, shutting doors loudly. Almost like he's going to let whoever it is scaring him know that he's still here. And so are we. The night was long and there was more that happened, but we have concluded it was a nightmare night. All morning long he moped around, layed in bed, on the floor, the couch. I told him he needs to try to sleep at night, and that it's ok to be scared and to come to us if that happens. As the day went on, he got headaches, his eyes hurt, fevers, tired. He wouldn't even let grandma Sherie talk to him and console him. Now we know he's sick. Tonight we thought we would get the boys out of the house, knowing Noah still didn't feel very good we took them to a movie. (Wall-E. don't go see it) About 15-20 minutes into it Noah's eyes hurt, he wants to lay down, starts crying, moaning, whining. I ask him if he just wants to go home (actually frustrated) and he says yes. We stay, and about 10 minutes later he pukes all over. Of course we left. We got home, he sat in the tub for a minute then went to bed. About 2 hours later he starts crying. Colby goes in his room. He's there for a while so I go check on them. Colby looks at me like he doesn't know what to do. I walk over to Noah and take one look. His eyes get big and you can see the fear. He was afraid of me. Colby tells me he's still asleep. We were totally stumped because he was already in bed. We couldn't just walk him back there and tell him to go to sleep. (which is what you're suppose to do if they have night terrors. Don't try to wake them up.) I tried to talk about something to see if he understood, or could respond. He couldn't. He got more scared. He was waving his hands, so I gently grabbed his arm and layed it down. It seemed to calm him. I could tell he wanted to talk, but the words wouldn't come. Sad. I asked him about Bernard, he responded. "Where's Bernard?" "I don't know" and he tried to look for him. We tried to find him. He just layed there. Then Colby looked in the closet. When Noah looked at Colby he got scared. He said he didn't want to leave. He wanted to go home. We were able to talk to him. I needed to convince him we were home. I didn't want to 'wake him up'. "Do you see your hats on the wall? Can you see your toys, the tool box?" He could see them. He could respond. Relief. He didn't want me to leave, so I layed by him for a minute.

He is now asleep, and hopefully we are done for the night. With him anyway. Cutler is still up, and now it's time to work on him. I'm reading this book Sherie's letting me borrow, and hopefully I can learn some new techniques from it. Wish me luck.

I feel so bad for Noah. He doesn't even have any idea this is happening, which is a good thing I guess. I really hope this is a childhood thing, and that we can learn the best way to deal with it. Like I said, it's sad, scary, frustrating, confusing. All of these things, to all of us. If anyone has any ideas, or knows the best way to handle it please help.