HELP please - screaming baby at night!

I am so  

Drew is 6 months old.  He has slept through the night since around 7-8 weeks old.  he has always been hard to get into bed for the night but once he was down that would usually be it until the morning.  Lately however!! He has been waking up absolutely screaming!  Several times a night, last night was 4 times, but it had taken me about 1 1/2 hours to actually get him to bed and then he woke up an hour later doing his prunes and I was so and ended up  and walked out and left him until I had calmed down. The majority of the time his eyes are still closed too so hes not fully awake IYKWIM?  I am 99% sure he is not unwell, will see how tonight goes and maybe take him to the drs tomorrow just to make sure.  He has a warm room, a full tummy, i dont think hes too hot or cold and hes is fine during the day, happy as larry!!

DH thinks it is just a phase and I should just handle it while it lasts, easy for him to say lol!! Any ideas and or advice please Im starting to go mad!!

He might be having night terrors? Sounds pretty random if hes got his eyes closed most of the time. Daniel has the odd nightmare and we just go in, pick him up, turn his lamp on and wait for him to calm down.

Stacey its hard to describe, almost like he wakes himself up with his screaming?  and gets more and more worked up, the letting him cry certainly would never work!  When he really went mental last night I picked him up, brought him out into the lounge and lay him on my lap and he was asleep in 5 minutes!

We went through a similar sort of thing a couple of months ago. Several times a night DS would cry out and not go back to sleep until I got up and replaced his dummy. Drove me bananas!

It went on night after night until one night I was so completely exhausted I slept right through the whole night and woke up at 7am. I can't tell whether DS continued to cry out during that night as neither DH or I heard him. But I think he must have, as I heard him again the next night. However, I told myself to resist the urge to *rescue* him and surprisingly enough, he made crying noises for a while (seemed like forever) then went back to sleep. I looked at him a couple of times and saw he had his eyes closed while crying - so perhaps they're just having a nightmare or something?  He never actually screamed though.  Over the next week or so, the number of times he cried out gradually decreased, and now he sometimes sleeps 12 hours, and at most may cry out twice.  There are the odd times that I replace his dummy for him - like when he starts talking to himself at 5am and I'm not ready to start the day yet.  But I've tried really hard to resist the urge to rescue him, and that seems to have helped. 

Edited to say this will be of no use to you now I've seen the further posts!

Edited by kakapo

Josh crys for about a min in his sleep almost always at the same time each night but sometimes it gets to the screaming stage then i just have to go in and pick him up and jiggle him till he goes back to sleep (although recently ive had to give him another feed in the night but he has been sick so its fine).

My mum had actually suggested leaving a light on at night just a dull one as he did it one night when she was about to leave the room after putting him down and it looked like he had had a massive fright in his dream and thought it might calm him down when he woke from it.

That does sound like the night terrors that Daniel has since they are comforted by your prescense and their dream ending they go back to sleep. Do you have a night light in his room? this helps Daniel... if that is the prob

Luke does this sometimes as well.  DH is sure that he is just scared and lonely, as the other night once I had picked him up and cuddled him he went straight back to sleep.

Best of Luck, sounds like lots of us are suffering from the same thing!

Just a random thing to try but maybe leaving a radio on so when he wakes he doesn't feel alone and might be able to resettle himself. Does he actually wake up screaming or wake up then start screaming??

What about teething?

Cooper cried out hysterically during the night when he was getting his top teeth (he got them first), and the only other time was when he got his 5mth imms.

to you all.

This will be something that will happen to me after bub is born, so I will be watching this thread to see everyones tips if any.