Against Fear
by Tab Moura
I remember the night that I realized she wasn’t ok. The night I switched from “woe is me, my baby never sleeps,” to “why isn’t she sleeping?” It was 2017, I had a newborn, and my 2 year old was having hour long night terrors every night. She was thrashing, and screaming and inconsolable… and just as suddenly as it began, it would end. And she had no recollection of our “time together” the following morning.
I tried playing her favorites, Trolls or Word Party. I tried singing or dancing to her favorite songs. I tried being hands off, testing to see if I was making it worse by intervening. Nothing helped, the duration was the same. This is my child with the most allergies, so her doctor wasn’t worried, just suggested we look over her diet again and see why she was “waking” so often. I didn’t know how to explain it at the time… but she wasn’t just crying, she wasn’t lucid. She didn’t seem to recognize me. Whatever these episodes were, she wasn’t awake and she wasn’t herself.
We eventually asked to try Benadryl, as long as we monitored her use carefully. It did make her fall asleep faster, but the nighttime events didn’t stop. We played with her diet some more, she was temporarily put on a few other medicines, including a steroid for her allergies. All of the pharmaceuticals caused side effects, and none of them helped her stay asleep. I asked to try Melatonin at this point, because why not. We were already using B and C class drugs to help her sleep, why not try a supplement that actually helps with sleep? It took an adult dose of melatonin to help her sleep, and we had to keep her awake late for it to prevent a “nighterror.” We no longer felt they were night terrors at this point, but we didn’t know what else to call them. We met with a naturopath who tested her saliva, she told me that my daughter’s cortisol was so high in her body that her melatonin was depleted.
Melatonin depleted, high cortisol, her poor liver, her poor brain… I sobbed.
Who could help my daughter? We had all of these clues and snapshots, but no answers. I was grateful for the company, but I still felt helpless. That’s when we tried CBD. At first we looked up her weight and tried 2.5mg of CBD, roughly .5mg for every 5lbs of bodyweight.
It was so strange… that night when her screaming began, she had this glimpse of recognition in her eyes. She was still screaming, but she was more alert than normal. She responded to me when I said her name. She eventually sat down with me and fell asleep watching Trolls. So we tried more. Eventually she was taking 10mg of CBD every night, and while she was still waking up in distress, she was finally lucid and expressive.
Who could help my daughter? I could. So I did.
My daughter is now an OMMA cannabis patient, we now know that she experiences neurological symptoms of various kinds. We learned that there are areas of the brain more easily affected by histamine— guess where it is? The fear center. We have come such a long way since the night I realized something was wrong. She is almost 6 and is now her own biggest advocate… because I taught her that we can always do something.
