sleep help please!

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Eve is 3 on the 29th, she has always been excellent with sleep but 3 weeks ago she got a chest infection and one night she was so upset I let her sleep in bed with me, since then every other night she will wake screaming for an unknown reason!
one night she will sleep through the next scream the next sleep through the next scream and so on and so forth.

I don't know what to do, when I go into her she is still laying in bed just thrashing about so she doesn't bother to get up, but as soon I get up to leave she screams even more!
I put on her favourite video usually and she will calm dow after 5-10 minutes.
But now my 20 month old who shares a room with her is barely getting any sleep and is so over tired and moody, my dad is starting to complain that Eve is waking him up, I''ve stopped her napping during the day but that hasn't helped

what can I do? I honestly have no idea why she is screaming and she's non vocal so she can't tell me, any ideas?

She might be having nightmares. Maybe something relating to how unpleasant the chest infection was. She might be reliving it in her miond, or it could be something else. No way to tell, either.

Could you bring a sleeping bag or something soft in there for you to sleep on, and maybe stay in there with her. Maybe if you are there she will feel secure and get herself out of the habit of freaking out. After maybe a week of that, maybe try to soothe her and leave and see if she can transition back to how it was before.

I can highly recommend melatonin. Even if there is a different reason for the sleep than it's usually used for, it will at least allow the family to get sleep whilst addressing any underlying anxiety or physiological cause.

Melatonin.

Can't say enough good things about it.

We weren't getting any sleep between my dd5 with ASD staying up late fretting about the possibility of people dieing and dd3 just being stubborn and refusing to go to sleep.

0.5-1mg of melatonin does the trick. Great stuff.

We had the sleeping issues. I had to lay down with ours or rock them or something, every night for years, and for the longest time at least one was in our bed with us. Here are a few ideas that worked for us. The problem is keeping it up night after night because after a long day it's so much easier to just give in than to do stuff to try and get them to sleep.

I had certain songs that I sang every night in the same order and I think that helped them shift gears into laying down and going to sleep. They knew what was coming next and that I wasn't about to just stop singing and say "Go to sleep!", so they didn't have to be on edge the whole time. I sang quite a few usually. You should pick your own of course but I picked ones I knew the words to and liked and weren't too fast. Mine were "A Pirate Looks At 40" - Jimmy Buffett, "Midnight At The Oasis", "Theme From Mash", "Danny Boy", "Wish You Were Here" - Pink Floyd, "Suite - Judy Blue Eyes" - CSN. After a few nights they start expecting the songs, all the songs, in the same order and it's part of a routine and associated in their minds with falling asleep.

Another thing I did was lay by them and pat them either on their back or chest with a heartbeat rhythm. Bomp bomp, pause, bomp bomp, pause, etc. Also stroking them between the eyebrows down their nose worked some too. Patting was the best though, but you have to do it long enough for it to get boring.

When mine were a little older I would talk them through a hypnosis induction. It usually helped them go right off to sleep and my oldest actually once told me that he still goes through it in his mind to this day when he can't sleep.

I never gave mine melatonin, but I have given Benadryl before when they just could not sleep. I don't see anything wrong with it as long as you don't do it every night, or even most nights. If you have to do it for a few nights in a row, I think that's perfectly ok. It will help them sleep and they need to sleep.

Cutting out the nap is a good idea. I'd also make sure she has some sort of toy in there. Maybe a stuffed animal or a blanket or extra pillow. Something to put next to her so she doesn't feel "alone" in there. A bed can feel empty and cold when you are used to someone else being in there with you. You could also try an electric blanket or heating pad.

You might also want to find one of the hypnosis sleep induction videos on YouTube and play that for her and see if it works. If you look around, you might find some that are subliminal and so you just hear soft music instead of talking.

Whatever you do, try and do the exact same thing every single night. The thing about that though, don't do too much because you don't want to get locked into a big long routine every night that you may not be able to change for years.

And don't be afraid of trying Benadryl. So many mothers think it's wrong to do that, but it's not. It helps the child sleep, it helps you get your rest, nobody is stressed out, it all works out good. It's not like you are giving it so you can watch a movie in peace or because you want to go out to the club and you want them to be good for the babysitter.

As for the sleeping trouble, here is a little humor. It's a "children's book" that isn't for children at all, about going to sleep. Read by Samuel L Jackson, it's called "Go The F*ck To Sleep!". It's humor but written in the style of a childrens book. Here's the YouTube link to him reading it. It actually was a best seller. Don't watch if you are offended by language.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv6b0CretuE[/youtube]

I think this varies a lot from one person to another but melatonin made my son moody and cranky the next day, more so than the lack of sleep did. Also it helped him fall asleep quite quickly but did nothing for helping him stay asleep. Staying asleep was really his big problem and the next day side-effects were just not worth it so we don't use it anymore.

When she's screaming, is she awake? Does she stop as soon as you come, or notice that you're there, or does she just stare blankly and keep screaming?

I'm asking because some kids have night terrors, which are kind of like sleepwalking except they scream instead. It's different from a nightmare because the kid is in deep sleep instead of REM sleep, and is not dreaming anything. When they wake up, they have no memory of it.

Mine too. Cranky.

How about sleeping in there for the next little while and see if she continues to wake up screaming?
I googled "Chest infection and Acute sleep disturbance" in children and Bronchiolitis came up. Here are the symptoms:

Runny nose
Mild fever
Cold-like symptoms
Difficult breathing
Rapid breathing
Shallow breathing
Hacking cough
Flared nostrils
Wheezing
Chest retractions
Abdomen retractions
Fever
Restlessness
Lethargic
Fatigue

I wonder if any of these symptoms are waking her up and scaring her?

Yes, shes still crying but she see's me and gets up, she calms down a bit and then as soon as i move she goes mental and screams again, she just woke up 10 minutes ago and was laying on the floor on her quilt for some reason so i put her back into bed with her quilt and she was still screaming her head off :/

I have no idea what meltatonin is!
just googling that lol

I don't tink its symptoms as she is perfectly healthy now

I'm scared of staying in with her in case this is because I let her sleep with me that one time and she gets used to it, she very easily gets used to me doing things so if I come in at night and stay with her when she wakes then she will scream every single time she wakes and I'll be doing it all the time, at the moment all I do is walk in, make sure she has her bear, give her a kiss, say I love her and then leave her to scream, she stops then within 5ish minutes, but I hate having to leave her to scream every other night

Not being able to breathe whether in a dream or awake is quite traumatic for both kids and adults, she may have flashbacks of the infection (which is still somewhat fresh in her mind). In short it feels like dying and her brain is in progress of wiring it together so that she learns from the experience, that's why i'm keeping with the dream theory. The other thing that keeps me on this track is that she cries when you leave again, she wants mommy/daddy to protect her.

In any case, leaving her does not hurt her, but it is an experience that she needs to get over and it's where you need to be supportive. If she's verbal enough or can show you what happens in the dream (it works best when she's calmed down, the sooner after waking the better). Eventually it will cease, but you might need to re-wane her off of waking up in the night.... all that I can say now is to have patience.

ohhh okay, I wish I knew how to calm her but even moving seems to set her off at the moment
she is completely non verbal apart from she says "bye bye" when she goes to bed, she enjoys bedtime and enjoys her sleep so I'm so not used to this and have no idea what to do

When my son was this age, one of us would camp out in his room on the floor and sleep there (we had a fold-out foam couch for this purpose.) We didn't sleep in the bed with him, and we didn't let him in the bed with us - but this sort of interim thing at least allowed everyone to get some sleep. If whoever was there was awake when he finally went to sleep, we'd go back to our own bed - he didn't seem bothered to wake up alone.

He has struggled with sleep his whole life, but we did manage to get him to stay in his room on his own eventually (he often lies there for hours, and will pop up and ask questions sometimes, but he does eventually get himself to sleep.)

THINK I FIGURED IT OUT!

her quilt is wrong!
no idea whats wrong about it but whenever I go in she is in bed thrashing about or its on the floor and shes on the floor with it trying to fix it, she jsut got into bed with me this afternoon because we are both exhausted after last nights lack of sleep and shes under my quilt having a total meltdown kicking and screaming, so i put her for a nap but as soon as i touched her with the quilt she has a hissy fit and slide off the bed to get away.

I just changed the cover yesterday, so that might contribute to it but i don't know what else, how can i fix this!?

Can you get her a sleeping bag? DS prefers one - they don't come off in the middle of the night and they wrap him up "Like a burrito" which he loves. (Better to borrow one at first in case you're having the opposite problem) If that works, then you're all set.

A couple of suggestions, and bring your daughter to check: flannel sheets, jersey sheets, cotton woven blankets. Tuck her quilt in firmly and make sure it isn't touching her.