Baby sleep terrors
Today was the third time I’ve seen my baby go from a sleeping nugget into a hysterical uncalmable banshee, and a little bit of research tends to indicate it’s baby sleep terrors, which is one of those diagnostics like colic that is more a broad definition than anything useful.
What I have learned though is when a baby wakes freaking the eff out, that the proper thing is not to do what I’ve been doing of holding her and attempting to sooth her. What’s absolutely absurd to me is that rice cereal is listed as a cause of night terrors in the member comments here, and it’s one of the things that’s consistent with everything.
Then again, it could also be separation anxiety, the fact that she was sick for nearly three weeks, that we were instructed to feed her near bedtime to get her digestive system back on track, that we switched formula to help also, and pretty much anything possible that is environmental that’s going on could also be a trigger according to the internet.
In other words, much of the stuff is bogus, but the night terrors are real.
Maggie woke a couple of nights ago screaming so loud I disconnected the webcam so the screaming wouldn’t blow out the speakers on the other end. ITMama managed to hear it on a different floor with an AC going and the baby’s door closed. It took a while to calm her down.
Today during a nap the same thing happened, and no amount of soothing would do anything and she looked a wee bit drugged. I just had to take her outside and let her watch cars pass by for about ten minutes until the normal light appeared back in my baby’s eyes.
Of course when you start doing baby diagnostics, you run the whole list through, gas, food, love, hugs, sleep, etc, and unfortunately that means everything becomes a “yeah, that’s what’s causing it” moment.
I’m not sure what’s causing it at the moment, but I do know my next attempt at dealing with freaking out baby M is going to be just being there, most likely with ear plugs, and seeing if it’ll pass.
The cries of baby sleep terrors sound a little like you’re torturing the child, pretty much nothing like any cry I’ve heard so far.
And it’s 12:48am and I’m up watching the monitor just waiting to see if this happens again. And if it does, then I’m supposed to do pretty much nothing. This is not exactly what I expected.
