Tales of Terrors in the Night

I had not planned on blogging about this, but since it has been a part of Landon’s first year I find it an appropriate addition. Landon has had Night Terrors since he was pretty little and recently had a “bad” one. These are not Nightmares…he does not wake up from them. Instead, he stays asleep and seems caught between consciousness and unconsciousness. Here is what happened last time…


Landon went to sleep at 8:00 p.m. and then I went to bed, because I was really sick. He woke up at 11:00 p.m. (very unlike him) screaming at the top of his lungs. I made a bottle and went to grab him from his crib. He was frozen with a blank stare facing the wall. I picked him up and tried to get him to snap out of it, but he wouldn’t. He was shaking a little bit and had NO interaction with me. The shaking really got to me, since I have an epileptic dog and it reminded me of his seizures. His heart was also beating rapidly. I flipped on the lights and woke Matt up. We both sat on the living room and Landon started coming to after 10 or 15 minutes. He...started babbling at first but seemed to have lost motor skills. I tried to hand him things and he couldn’t really grab them. He kept saying Dada...Mama and crawling to us, but he wasn't totally himself. I was so scared and thought about calling an ambulance. This all was over a few minutes that felt like forever, but he eventually snapped out of it and became himself again. Had a bottle and slept until almost 9:00 a.m. and he was perfectly fine when he woke up.







They say that Terrors like this can be caused by stress. I don’t think Landon has any stress and he is kept on a bed time routine, but since he was sick I am hoping that maybe it had some influence on him. His cold was pretty bad and he was stressed about sleep since he could hardly breath through his nose. Teething can also be a stress in babies and he has about 3 teeth coming in right now. He did not have a fever or I would considered febrile seizures. Instead, this was most certainly a Night Terror. This isn’t the first one that he has had, but it was by far the worst. I will be speaking with his Pediatrician about this at his 12 month well check. If he continues to have them I will have a sleep study done on him.






The good new is that they are harmless for him. They are extremely scary for us as his parents, but we are hoping this will be something he just grows out of. And he will never even know he has them, because we aren’t going to tell him.