by BabyCenter Guest Blogger posted in Products

By Stacy Bignardi
This is not a sponsored post; this is a real mom's experience with an interesting product.
My first son was a handful from the start. I'm not sure where the expression "slept like a baby" came from, because in my house, there wasn?t much sleep being had. Putting him to bed took over an hour every night. I was dealing with postpartum depression and having a hard time bonding. Bedtime made things harder.

Enter night terrors. When he was 10 months old, I heard blood-curdling screams from his nursery and ran in, panicking. I couldn't soothe him! When I tried to pick him up, he screamed, cried, hit, clawed at me. It was awful. Finally, after a long time, he took a bottle and settled back down. Whew. That was weird. But crisis averted. Right" No. It happened again a few weeks later. And then a few weeks later, around the same time of the night. Gradually, the strange screaming sessions escalated, until it was happening as many as 5 times a week and lasted over 45 nerve-wracking minutes. What was this terrible cycle" And how soon before it killed me"
One exhausted day I told my mom what was going on. She suggested it might be something called night terrors. In a nutshell, my baby was getting caught between sleep cycles. His brain was fighting between waking up and staying asleep. He didn't know what was around him, and didn't register familiar people or objects (which is why I couldn't hug ...