Terrors of the Night
It happened again. Screaming, kicking, more screaming. The visceral, blood-curdling kind of scream. On and on for an hour or more. And I had never felt more helpless than in that moment, in that hotel room.
My toddler was having a night terror.
Let me be clear: Night terrors are not nightmares. They do not inhabit the same place in the brain where dreams happen. If they did, I would have woken my daughter and calmed her down with reassuring words and warm snuggles. But she was deep in REM sleep, far away from consciousness. No amount of gentle nudges or even picking her up would budge her.
On this particular night, we were staying with my husband and our other (older) daughter in an Orlando hotel. It was midnight, and we were certain another hotel guest would call the police after hearing Kate’s cries through the walls.
“I’ll take her down to the lobby,” my bleary-eyed husband suggested.
While I appreciated that suggestion, I realized that could be a mistake. My husband is white, and Kate is Chinese. We had adopted her the prior year from southern China. In fact, her first night terror happened before we even left the country. At that time, we assumed it was a symptom of being swooped up by strange adults with a strange language. Never did we imagine this would come to characterize most of Kate’s nights – at home or while traveling – for the first few years of Kate’s life.
So, an already terrible situation could be exponentially worse if onlookers saw a white man with a hysterical little Asian girl, convulsing in public, not responding to his calming overtures.
Luckily, I am half-Chinese and have happily been mistaken for Kate’s birth mother multiple times. I threw some clothes on and carried her down to the hotel lobby, where I placed her on the floor and watched her roll around, thrashing violently – while sound asleep. Embarrassed, I tentatively looked at the night manager, who was eyeing us from behind the counter.
“She can take as long as she needs to calm down,” he said. “My sister had night terrors when we were growing up. I know what that’s like.”
That the night manager not only knew what we were dealing with was wholly unexpected and such a relief! I couldn’t thank him enough. And, together, we watched Kate roll and kick and scream for another 45 minutes until she conked out (even though she was already asleep), hot and sweaty from her labors, but at least peaceful once again.
The next day, Kate woke up, bright and cheerful – as if she’d had the best night’s sleep ever. My husband and I were exhausted, but relieved. And that’s how Kate’s young life continued, until – one day – we figured out how to prevent her night terrors from even starting. The secret? I’ll share that in another entry in “Musings.”