Night terrors

I am not sure what thread to put this in, so any advice would be greatly appreciatied!
So I am watching my niece for the week and my sister told me she has night terrors which I didn't think they were going to be as bad as she said the were. Boy was I wrong! My niece is 6 months old and has them a few times a week during the night and NOW has them during her naps. It is VERY sad to watch her. Eyes tightly closed, back arched, arms in the air, screaming bloody murder for a good 10-20 minutes. My sister said not to pick her up, but I just had to! I even tried to wake her up, but she won't wake up. She will just lay on your lap and be thrashing around screaming, sometimes coughing and hysterical while she is COMPLETLY asleep, like dead to the world- asleep. I looked at a few websites and they were not any help.
Anyone ever have this exprience or know what to do and if anything helps?

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Night terrors

Yes. My son Oscar got them very often. He's almost two & now usually only gets them when he's sick. What we did was wake him up. Turn on the lights, call his name, walk around the apartment. It could take up to ten minutes but if he did wake up he wouldn't go back into the terror. Sometimes I could nurse him but usually about ten to fifteen minutes later he would be screaming again. Waking up fully stopped it for the night or nap. Some other things that helped were turning on a special music toy he liked or another type of distraction.

I know online it says to do nothing (from what I've read) but it didn't work for us. Good luck. It's scary & sad to live through but does end.

My brother used to have night terrors sometimes. Man were they scary! My mom would always take him outside when he was having one. It always helped to wake him and calm him down.