rivka

Night terrors again last night. They seem to come in clusters - she'll go weeks without, and then have several episodes in one night. Michael took the lead for most of them (I took the 2am shift), which was nice. It's helpful to share the misery.

Her room seemed pretty hot. I can't think of any other triggers. She did have a hard time separating at bedtime ("I'm aaaaalll alooooone in the daaaarknessss!!!"), so maybe she was still tense when she fell asleep.

I've found that it's very helpful to have a record of things like this in my LJ. If the night terrors escalate, I'll be able to go back and say "Here's when they started. Here's when they became more frequent. Here are possible triggers."

...And then the doctor can do nothing with that information. Heh. Really the only things you can do in response to night terrors are displacement activities. They make you feel better.

Alex continues to have a cold, and last night we stretched her bedtime a little later than was optimal. At first she seemed to go right down, but after about half an hour she woke and cried. I went upstairs to settle her. A few minutes after that, she woke and cried again. She seemed exhausted, but unable to stay asleep.

I decided that maybe her congestion was worse lying down, and that perhaps a dose of cold medicine (antihistimine + cough suppressant) would relieve the symptoms enough to allow her to fall into a deeper sleep. So I gave her a dose, and rocked her for a few minutes, and put her back into bed.

The next five hours were a nightmare.

Alex would sleep for 10-30 minutes. Then she'd start to whimper fretfully, quickly escalating to crying and... what I can only describe as howling: intense repeated vocalizations of "waah! waah!" - as a word, not actual sobs. We'd go into her room and her eyes would be shut. She'd thrash her arms or, in the worst episodes, roll her body vigorously back and forth. She wouldn't respond when we spoke to her. She couldn't say what she needed. Touch seemed to help, especially holding her in the rocking chair. When we'd do that, she'd slowly calm down and fall into a deeper sleep, without ever waking up all the way and being lucid.

I slept in her room so I could attend to her. Eventually, after 1:30am, she fell into a deep sleep, waking only one more time at 4am to use the potty. This morning she remembered none of it.

The only thing I can think of is that she had a weird adverse reaction to the cold medicine. Somewhere out there her pediatrician is saying "I told you so." The last time we saw him, he said that we shouldn't be using cold medicines because they're not proven to work in children and the risks outweigh the benefits... but we've still sometimes used an antihistamine at night to help relieve her symptoms so she can sleep. Um. I guess that didn't work, huh?