I know what inspired the movie Exorcist. Just imagine a kid waking up at night and screaming. Mother enters the room, "Mommy's right here. Everything's okay!" and the mother touches the child's arm. The child starts screaming twice as loudly as if touched with burning iron. The father joins the scene and also tries to calm the child who still hasn't opened her eyes. The child cries and cries and screams and then cries some more for 10 minutes while both parents are confused. Then she walkes around the room being angry at everything 
and suddenly calms and goes back to sleep. In the morning the child is happy and playful as if it had all been a dream.
and suddenly calms and goes back to sleep. In the morning the child is happy and playful as if it had all been a dream.
The contrast between nighttime Siiri and daytime Siiri and is like the difference between night and day, or the difference between being possessed by a demon or not being possessed. 
(A lot of good that baptism did. 
). I've done a lot of Google research and it's actually a sort of sleep disorder ( a parasomnia) called confusional arousal. It mostly affects infants and toddlers. It's almost like a form of sleepwalking, because the child is still asleep during the episode. Siiri is very difficult to wake up when it happens. At first we tried to wake her up every time. What else are you going to do if the child is screaming at 3 a.m. for no particular reason. It sometimes worked but usually it just made her mad. And I really mean MAD! She was still not very responsive, except she started making demands. "Bunny doesn't want to be tucked in! BUNNY DOESN'T WANT TO BE TUCKED IN! BUNNY...
"
(A lot of good that baptism did. ). I've done a lot of Google research and it's actually a sort of sleep disorder ( a parasomnia) called confusional arousal. It mostly affects infants and toddlers. It's almost like a form of sleepwalking, because the child is still asleep during the episode. Siiri is very difficult to wake up when it happens. At first we tried to wake her up every time. What else are you going to do if the child is screaming at 3 a.m. for no particular reason. It sometimes worked but usually it just made her mad. And I really mean MAD! She was still not very responsive, except she started making demands. "Bunny doesn't want to be tucked in! BUNNY DOESN'T WANT TO BE TUCKED IN! BUNNY... "
A few days ago she made up a new demand "Put Siiri back!". Neither me nor Erkki knew what she meant by it until Siiri started demanding it in the middle of the night, screaming it as loud as she can. Finally Erkki picked her up and placed her in the last place she had been standing and that solved it. Erkki must have casually nudged Siiri, thus "helping" her move further and now had to restore Siiri's location in the room. You see, any kind of help is completely forbidden at night. For Siiri it's all about "myself!". I do like to encourage Siiri to try to open buttons herself, open the door herself, put on clothing herself, but it's not quite the same when a sleep deprived (or still askeep fidgety toddler picks up a class full of water, says, "I will do it myself." and then attempts to climb and sit on the bed while still holding the glass. If I take away the glass, she will say (I mean, scream as loud as possible), "do not help me!".
Some of the demands are perfectly reasonable. If a stuffed toy falls off the bed and she wants to climb down and get it, it's a perfectly reasonable request. However, if she holds on to her thumb with the other hand and cries, "Remove finger!", that's not quite as reasonable. I thought she was simply confused but then she told me to get the scissors from the kitchen to cut the finger off. 
There's also a thing with hating her left hand. At night, Siiri's left hand isn't allowed to do anything. It can't help adjust the blanket or pick up a stuffed toy. Sometimes it isn't even allowed to help hold that glass of water. Sometimes Siiri lets me help her hold the glass with my right hand, but not with the left hand.
There's also a thing with hating her left hand. At night, Siiri's left hand isn't allowed to do anything. It can't help adjust the blanket or pick up a stuffed toy. Sometimes it isn't even allowed to help hold that glass of water. Sometimes Siiri lets me help her hold the glass with my right hand, but not with the left hand.
The nighttime tantrums are really annoying and cause sleep deprivation to all of us. It's been going on for months, with some nights worse than others. Sometimes all is quiet for weeks and then sometimes there isn't a single quiet night for a week. Lately it happens several times a week. After I read up on confusional arousal (or sleep terrors, whatever the difference really is), I found out we're not supposed to wake her up at all. Actually we had tried just waiting out the crying but only for a few minutes at a time and then we interfered. When we finally tried to not interact with her in any way during the episode, she cried for 6 minutes and then simply went back to sleep, not saying anything or doing anything. It won't always work though. Even touching the blanket in the wrong way can end with 30 minutes of confused tantrum. I call it confused because even if she gets exactly what she wants, she decides she wanted something completely different in stead.
Confusional arousal is really interfering with potty training. 
During the day she doesn't use diapers and doesn't have any accidents. She often wakes up in the morning completely dry, except when she has one of those nighttime confusional arousal episodes and can't make it to the bathroom in time. She tries, but it's just doomed effort. She tries to do everything with only her right hand, including taking off her pants and climbing on the toilet seat. When something fails, she has to do it again from start, all while crying and screaming. By the time she's sitting, it's 20 minutes later and too late.
During the day she doesn't use diapers and doesn't have any accidents. She often wakes up in the morning completely dry, except when she has one of those nighttime confusional arousal episodes and can't make it to the bathroom in time. She tries, but it's just doomed effort. She tries to do everything with only her right hand, including taking off her pants and climbing on the toilet seat. When something fails, she has to do it again from start, all while crying and screaming. By the time she's sitting, it's 20 minutes later and too late.
Some mothers think that the episodes are caused by discomforts such as wanting to pee or being too hot or too cold. Doctors are mostly just confused themselves. The description of the episodes varies a lot but tantrums are rarely mentioned. They often say that interacting with the child will make the situation worse but they don't say that the child might want to cut her finger off. One thing that all the medical descriptions say is that lack of sleep causes such parasomnias as night terrors and confusional arousals. And since parasomnias cause lack of sleep, the condition starts to feed itself. For Siiri, lack of sleep is most definitely an issue. It takes HOURS to get her to fall asleep. Lately we start putting her to bed at 8 or 8.30 but she falls asleep near midnight. Nap time isn't much better: I read her the stories at 1.30 and she falls asleep around 3 p.m. or later. The smartest solution suggestion to a similar problem was to put the child to sleep even earlier, at 7 p.m. because of the child's circadian rhythm. If we do that, Siiri can only see Erkki in her dreams. I don't like that solution one bit but we might not have a choice. 
...or perhaps a priest with holy water would be more convenient.
...or perhaps a priest with holy water would be more convenient.
My 4 year has a similar problem. He has cried every night since he was 2 weeks old. When he was little we thought it was trapped wind. It still seems that way. During the day he is great, but at night it is as though he is in pain. It eventually passes, both the upset and often the wind, and he just goes back to sleep. It just doesn't seem right that he should be going through this almost every night at his age. Although he can talk very fluently now, he can barely utter a word when he is crying. Sometimes he mumbles but it makes no sense. occasionally after he calms down and i ask him why he was crying, he says he doesn't know. He never talks about it during the day, he either doesn't remember or he REALLY doesn't like to talk about it. If i push him for an answer he says that he had a sore tummy, but i feel fobbed off.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it used to be wind and now it's night terrors, maybe it is something not right with his intestines or something, maybe it is still wind and the pain causes a disruption in his sleep, leading to confusional arousal???? I just don't know.
Maybe your little precious has trapped wind?
A lot of time has passed since I wrote this blog post. Siiri will be 4 years old in a couple of months and she still sometimes has these episodes. Currently things are good but whenever she goes to bed too tired, she wakes up and has a tantrum at night, and continues to have a night terror for a few nights in a row. Trapped wind is among the discomforts that can cause a child to wake up in the wrong sleep phase and that can cause a night terror episode, but it isn't the main reason. It can just trigger it. Most children won't have night terrors when they wake up at night due to trapped wind or wanting to pee.
ReplyDeleteSiiri's night terrors are slowly morphing into episodes of talking in her sleep. Talking in your sleep or walking in your sleep or having night terrors are all parasomnias and they're pretty similar and can be genetically inherited from parents. In stead of waking up screaming, Siiri lies in bed with her eyes closed and suddenly shouts, "no! I want that doll!" so I reply quickly, "here you go, honey. Of course you can have that doll." and Siiri visibly relaxes and continues to sleep. :) I'm hopeful that a couple of years from now she will only have sleep walking and sleept talking in stead of night terrors.
My husband has some kind of parasomnia (we think it is REM Behaviour Disorder and a Neurophysiologist agreed that this is probably so based on the symptoms).
ReplyDeleteHe can leap out of bed during his dreaming state to try and get over a drawbridge that is closing or to escape gremlins/ a truck etc. Sometimes he just giggles or says strange things that make it clear he is dreaming. Despite all this activity, he only rarely hurts himself and rarer still, hurts me (and not seriously). More often, he wakes me up and I can be alarmed and find it hard to settle down again. He often remembers nothing the next morning.
Like you, I have learnt to reassure him: 'You're okay. Don't worry about it.' or to assertively guide him: 'Don't move. You're asleep. If you move, you may hurt yourself. Come and lie down. Here's your pillow.' Switching a light on to show him that he is in his bedroom or placing a hand on his back helps calm/ reorientate him. Sometimes he wakes, but generally not.
I have noticed that he sometimes seems very hot when it happens and I wonder if him not being able to regulate his temp sufficiently is part of the problem... I try to make sure that the room is a good temperature for him. Alcohol or being too full of food can be triggers in his case, as is stress.
He has been prescribed Clonazepam, but prefers Melatonin (what the body naturally produces during sleep as part of the circadian rhythm) or Valerian (herbal)... when he takes anything at all.
I know that this is not the same as your daughter's sleep difficulty. It seems much more frightening for you if she's screaming. Remember that probably most children have crazy dreams... it's not so usual for parents to be able to have a window into those dreams.
Medication of some sort may help you all to sleep better... perhaps you can look into it with the guidance of a medical professional? Melatonin in particular may help in regulating her sleep... something to investigate further perhaps.
Thank you for the comment. The causes are similar for children. We were told that the medication that can be used is not meant for young children. Actually it really took a lot of effort to get any professional advice on the matter at all. Eventually she grew out of it between ages 4 and 5. At some point she started waking up again and it was caused by difficulty breathing. Sleep apnea is a common cause for night terrors and many people in forums tell stories about their child being cured of night terrors after their sleep apnea was addressed. Siiri had surgery to remove adenoids and now she's sleeping very well. Even when she had nightmares a couple of months ago, she woke up scared but rational and really awake, not half asleep and delusional. :)
ReplyDeleteIt is so helpful to read a story describing my own little one and then to get a glimpse into the future, even if our stories play out with slight differences in the end. We just completed our first week of confusional arousal with our 20 month old and it was nothing short of traumatic. Poltergeist was all I could think of the first night, then I thought of night terrors and tried to not make it worse (which I did anyway), and now I'm focused on stabilizing her bedtime routine and bumping up bedtime. I see I need to think of this as reality for the long haul which is really challenging. She was a colicy baby and has never slept well--therefore neither have I. But, it helps me to prepare what's left of my mind :) My father has sleep apnea so that might be something for us to look into. I'm so glad you are past it and know that someday we will be too. Thank you again for sharing your story!
ReplyDeletethe same thing happened today my son was almost possessd . Good to know this is Normal
ReplyDeleteMy son just had an episode, but he seems awake, he kept punching me and kicking, I told him I am just beside him, and theast thing he wanted was a cold water, placed it in his sippy cup wuth straw, asked him if he is awake, and he answered yes, drank it, then told me to put his water beside him, then he went to sleep now...snoring (45mins of confused arousal).
ReplyDelete