Parasomnia Activity

When I was in high school, a friend drank a bottle of Robitussin and spent the better part of the night wide awake, screaming that spiders were crawling all over her skin. I spent the night trying to convince her otherwise and to keep her quiet so that the dorm teacher wouldn't come to her room. I wasn't sure what rule she had actually broken, but it seemed like there was probably a policy against drinking an entire bottle of cough syrup. All in all, it was an unpleasant experience and, if I had ever thought about drinking a bottle of Robitussin before (pretty sure I hadn't), I definitely wasn't going to do so after that.

I was reminded of that evening today when Lucy woke up from napping on the couch and started screaming in terror. She has the stomach flu so I immediately thought that her head or stomach was hurting again. When I asked her what was wrong, she looked right at me, yet seemed to look through me, and continued to scream. She kept saying over and over again, "Don't let them get me!" And then, "I don't want to go home!" Her eyes were open but she was seeing something I couldn't see. She clung on to me, her body tense with fear. Every once and a while she would thrash away from me, screaming again. I did my best to hold onto her, finally realizing that she was experiencing night terrors.

According to DrHull.com, night terrors are "a disorder of incomplete arousal from deep sleep. Most of the brain is shut down, but certain motor (muscle movement) circuits are active when they should be quiet. Thrashing around, walking up and down in the crib, and seemingly terrified crying out are the result." Lucy has had night terrors before and it never fails to scare me. Usually, it happens at night. Somehow, in the brightly lit room, it felt even eerier to find her lost in a nightmare.

The worst part about having a child with night terrors is that you can't really do much. I held her and rocked her and it seemed to help a bit, but it is extremely difficult to wake her, and not even recommended to do so. Listening to her though, I know the terror is real, and it kills me not to be able to get her away from whoever was trying to get her in her dream.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. She is now lying on the couch watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and eating a grilled cheese sandwich. She has no recollection that she had a nightmare, only that she just woke up from a nap. Whoever was trying to get her has faded away, hopefully never to return.

As for me, I am breathing a sigh of relief, knowing that the nightmare has passed. And I'm breathing an even bigger sigh of gratitude, reminding myself that we have been fortunate enough so far to raise children whose nightmares have only occurred while they have been sleeping.