Night Terrors

Josh is such a sweet kid. But he has been such a challenge lately. I think it was yesterday we were putting him in time out every other minute because of his screaming. He has the loudest, most obnoxious, high pitched, ear-splitting scream I have ever heard. Whenever he screams, one of us simply picks him up and takes him to his room and puts him in Jenna's crib (if it is empty of course). He could probably climb out but hasn't tried surprisingly enough. As soon as he calms down, we bring him back. Sometimes he catches himself mid-scream as soon as we start walking towards him and says, "no, no, no!" He hates to go to time out.

Then last night he had night terrors. In our family whenever the baby wakes up in the night, I am the one to get up and take care of her. Rick's duty is to take care of any of the other kids that wake up in the night. They don't get up all that often, but it happens -- bad dreams, illness and things like that. Well, last night was one of those nights. However, Rick was gone overnight on a Seminary Inservice Retreat in Cedar City and I sure missed him!

Josh woke up 45 minutes after I put him to bed having one of those delusional night terror things. He cried and screamed for 45 minutes. I tried to comfort him and have him sit by me while the older kids and I were watching a movie but he was screaming (with his eyes shut) and wouldn't wake up. He was sobbing and saying that there was a bubble in his eye. He screamed over and over, "Make it go away Mommy, make it go away!!” It was so sad!! If Rick were here I would have had him give him a blessing. Janika came home from a late baby-sitting job and tried to take over by reading him stories. Then I said a prayer outloud with him and he eventually fell asleep in my arms.

I thought it was over for the night but I was wrong. An hour later he woke up screaming and crying again. I just didn’t know what to do for him -- nothing worked. He wouldn't lay by me in my bed. He kept waking up every hour. After the third time of this I was so tired and getting really frustrated and even angry. He had already woken the baby up twice. I had just re-trained her to sleep through the night (again) several days ago and had stopped nursing her during the night. But tonight I was too tired to deal with two crying kids and so I nursed her back to sleep knowing she would now start waking up in the night again and I'll have to do the whole crying-it-out-thing all over again another night.

I finally got Josh to calm down and go back to sleep (although I don't think he was ever awake) by rocking him in the rocker in his room. I can’t believe the girls slept through it all. We went through the whole cycle several times.

Now I am completely exhausted and have a busy full day ahead. Josh woke up early as usual and seemed perfectly fine -- running around as happy as could be. I don't think he even remembers any of our long, tortuous night together.

Now if I can just hold on until nap time!