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If you’d rather read than watch, here’s a transcript of this week’s video…
Hi, I’m Dana and it’s time for this week’s question, and it comes from Mary, who asks:
I feel like my baby might be having nightmares. Could that be true?
Well, I think this is a great question because I get a lot of comments from people about nightmares and also something called night terrors. And I think it’s important to talk about what the difference between the two are.
A nightmare, obviously, is some sort of a sensory stimulation in a dream-like state where it’s often alarming or scary. I’ve done a lot of research on when actually a nightmare can emerge and the verdict seems to be out on this. There are some people who suggest that you can’t actually have a nightmare until you’ve had some sort of traumatic event happen in your life or your imagination is such that you can imagine these types of scenarios. So, a lot of people will suggest that can’t happen until the toddler years at least. Then there’s a lot of people who think that there is no reason why a baby couldn’t have a scary dream of such.
We know that REM sleep which is our dream sleep happens in utero by about 28 weeks of gestation there are signs that the fetus is having REM sleep. What possibly could they be dreaming about? But the thoughts are that it basically prepares the brain, starts making connections in neuro-pathways so that when they are exposed to sight and sound and taste and smell that they already have some groundwork for what that is and where it should be stored.
So, I think that it is possible that a baby could have a nightmare or something that causes a bit of an alarm in the night. I’ve had enough clients tell me that they’ve gone in and the baby is crying but the baby still looks like she’s asleep and that could be some sort of a nightmare situation.
So, it is possible, but again, I’m almost cautions when I agree with people on these types of things. It’s not an excuse for a terrible sleeper. If your baby is waking up 2, 5, 10 times a night I want you to be cautious that your not always giving yourself that excuse. You want to make sure that you’ve got a baby or toddler who has some great sleep skills so that if they do have a nightmare then you can go in, offer a bit of comfort and then they have the skills they need to get themselves back to sleep afterwards.
Ok, now night terrors are completely different. What happens in a night terror is basically similar to sleepwalking situation. It’s being stuck between two sleep cycles and what a child normally does is cry out. When you go in, the common characteristics of a child experiencing a night terror is that they are not making sense, or there’s a vacant look in their eyes, or they’re not answering you when you ask questions. Sometimes it starts out with crying and then it’s just sort of babbling or looking sort of vacantly at you. It doesn’t have to be full on screaming the entire time and it can last a minute or it can last as long as 40 minutes.
So, I think what is alarming in the night terrors is that it looks scary to the viewer. So, if you go in and your child is doing this it will feel scary for you. The good news is it’s not at all scary for the child. In fact, they won’t remember that it happened in the morning. They won’t be able to articulate what happened at all and it tends to be something that a child just eventually outgrows.
It can be hereditary. So, if you had night terrors, maybe your child is going to have them as well. They tend to occur more often when a child is sleep deprived. So, if you’ve got your child on a great schedule, going to bed at the same time every night, waking up at the same time every morning and not varying from that very far you’ll find that that often is a cure or it definitely helps in situations like that which is good news for me because I love to promote healthy sleep habits. My main number one goal for parents is to make sure that their children stay on a schedule and don’t vary from that very much at all.
So, that’s just a little bit of information about the world of nightmares versus night terrors.
Thanks for watching and sleep well.
