Going BUMP in the night! 

Going BUMP in the night!

For all who send me their cute emails telling me that they read this journal daily for a good dose of laughter, STOP READING NOW! This entry won't be so cheerful!

Connor had a night terror last night and I am still sort of freaking out about it. Thank God he was in the bed with me when it happened. Usually Connor comes to bed with me if Chris is up late doing work or spending time with the big boys, as was the case last night. Then around midnight he woke up, or so I thought, thrashing around the bed, screaming and terrified. Mother of the Year here, I decided to to slap him lightly to jolt him awake after he failed to respond to my voice, and when I slapped him, it was like he didn't even notice. He just kept flailing around, even hitting his head off the wrought iron headboard, yelling that "they" were getting him, that "they" were making him mad, that he was afraid of "them," but when I asked who "they" were and kept reassuring him that it was just him and Mommy in the bed, he didn't even hear me. I got really freaked out, and in another bright maneuver left him alone to go get Chris, who was at the complete other end of the house and couldn't hear us all the way downstairs. I ran as fast as I could but by the time we got back to him, he was in the bathroom, peeing everywhere and screaming and freaking out. Then he ran back to our bedroom and kept thrashing around. We put him on the bed and Chris was loudly telling him that he was okay and no one was going to hurt him, but he just kept going. Then the most bizarre thing was that if one of his thrashes landed him in a lying-down position, he'd sometimes zonk back out for about a minute before waking back up and going at it again. I could not believe that we could be shouting to him "MOMMY IS RIGHT HERE! HERE, LET MOMMY HOLD YOU!" but he couldn't hear us. I was shaking his arm around and he didn't even seem to notice. Then at the end, he seemed to start to hear some of the words Chris was saying, and he was sort of repeating them, but he kept incorporating them into whatever nightmare he was having. And then it was over very suddenly and he fell asleep in my arms. After twenty minutes I tried to move him, but he woke up, and he said, "Hi Mommy, I want to sleep in your bed..." and sort of dozed off again. So I said, "Hey, buddy, did you have a bad dream?" He started to sort of wake up a little and said, "No... Well, I think I might have had one like thirteen days ago, but I didn't have any today." We kept him in the bed with us and he just slept normally for the rest of the night. But the whole thing was over 45 minutes long and really freaked us out!
I called Mom Elio today to see if she had any advice on what to do if it happens again, because I remember her telling me that Chris did this when he was small. But thankfully she said that to her recollection, it happened pretty infrequently. But she did say that just as with Connor, that even if she thought she got Chris awake, she had no way of knowing if he was really awake or still dreaming. So I guess we just have to basically keep him from hurting himself when/if this happens again, but I'm hoping that if it has to happen again, we get a nice long break first-- I'm still a little shaken! But happily for him, Connor has no clue that anything happened last night. We asked him again in the morning to tell us about his dreams and he said, "I don't think I dreamed anything last night! I guess I flew to Planet Nothing!" What a kid.

Editing to add this link that my friend directed me to, in case anyone else has a kid who does this:
http://askdrsears.com/html/7/T071300.asp
Shocking, that it describes exactly what happened to Connor. So I'm going to try the solutions that the article recommends if it occurs again.