My 2year old has recently started waking at night and crying uncontrollably. She cries so hard I fear she'll throw up and sometimes makes herself hoarse. We've tried letting her self soothe but it seems to get worse the longer we leave her. It also gets worse if we go in and try to comfort her. She has always been a fabulous sleeper. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I suggest you look up night terrors. The flight or fight part of the brain is not mature yet, and fires off, causing children to wake up suddenly in a state of hysteria. They seem to be half awake and half asleep and it is almost impossible to settle them down. Sometimes the more you try to wake them up or fuss with them, the worse they get. Fortunately, it usually only lasts a couple of months and they grow out of it. Here is an article: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/night-terrors/basics/definition/con-20032552
Sounds like night terrors. You could talk to your child's doctor about it, but pretty much the only treatment outside of heavily medicating the kid is scheduled awakenings, to make sure they get enough sleep, while not sleeping long enough to have the night terrors. I had night terrors for something like 2-3 years when I was an infant/toddler. And sleep apnea. I was a joy as a very young child.
I agree that it sounds like night terrors. Awful for the parent, my daughter never remembered them. The advice 20 years ago was not to try to wake her up as it would make it worse. I had a really hard time with that. I would go in and comfort her, rubbing her back and telling her it was okay. It would take at least 30 min. for her to calm down enough to go back to sleep.
My oldest suffered from night terrors for a long time. They peaked around age 2. We were told to not physically contact her because she might interpret it as we were trying to harm her since she wasn't really awake. She's 5 now, and she only has 1-2 a year now. Before, she was on an every three week cycle. One other thing we noticed, was these episodes happened more when she was overtired. Maybe you could adjust bedtime and try giving her more sleep?
Oh no, I wasn't saying to wake up the child in the middle of it. I was saying you schedule times to wake up the child i.e. every 4 hours, wake them up, then they go back to sleep.
Thank goodness, not night terrors. Had her at the doctor...her first ever ear infection...and 2 year molars working their way in to boot.
