Nightmares or night terrors?

[sweetpeamom25]

Our DD will be 3 the end of October. The last few months she has been having nightmares or night terrors in the middle of the night. She's crying and upset, but not really awake. Sometimes when we go in her room she's still laying down in bed, or she's just sitting up. She usually won't say anything, as hard as we try and usually still has her eyes shut. I've read a little bit about night terrors and I think it's more that than nightmares, because she's not really awake. We try to comfort her and get her to stop crying and go back to sleep. Sometimes she wakes up but other times she doesn't. We'll be comforting her and then all of a sudden she wants to lay down and she's asleep again.

Our DS was born in August, so DD has been going through lots of changes in her life. We just don't know how to handle these 'episodes' and don't know what causes them. Has anyone else had experience with this? It breaks my heart because she's crying so hard, it's almost like she's in pain, but I'm pretty sure she's not. I hate seeing her this way. Please, any advice would be appreciated!

[nevaehsmom327]

Part of it COULD be growing pains too. Especially if she's not waking up. I'm going through this with my DSD right now. She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming her head off and not knowing what's going on around her. We literally just have to "shhhhhh" her and lay her back down to sleep. She really likes one specific book read to her before bedtime so we've been reading that to her if she wakes up in the middle of the night which has been helping. It's like their brains just flick on for a few moments, then after being lulled back down it's all fine and dandy and back to bed.

[nevaehsmom327]

Oh, so a part of the growing pains, if you expect that it's those at all, just give her a small dose of Tylenol before bed.