Baby seizure

Baby J had the most terrible week of his life.

On Monday he developed a slight fever (38C), so I stayed home with him all day. The fever went up a little in the afternoon so his dad and I drove him to Medical City to get checked. They told us to give him paracetamol every 4 hours and sent us home, it's too early to tell what he has. So home we went. Baby J played a little, nursed, and took a nap in my arms. In the early evening he opened his eyes, stared blankly out and didn't move. We called his name and he didn't respond, I shook him and he didn't respond. His eyes were open but his body was limp and he was completely unresponsive. In a panic, we ran to the car. While opening the gate and getting the keys, my husband was holding J, and he started to seize. His leg stiffened up.

I held my child's limp ragdoll-like body in the car on the drive over to Medical City. His eyes were open but his eyeballs were rolling to the back of his head. Prayers poured out of my mouth and I was in a state of hysteria, it seemed, for the 3 minutes it took us to get to the ER. There are no words to describe how it feels to have the thought in your head that it is entirely possible your kid won't make it to the hospital in time, or he makes it there and there is nothing they can do. The closest word to describe it is "horrifying" but that doesn't even describe half of what it felt like.

We pulled up to the ER and I screamed for a doctor, she came and I told her he is completely unresponsive. Skipping the triage section we ran into the pedia beds and found an empty one.

When I laid J down he had started to move. He whimpered and I gave a big exhale and thanked the Lord that he was beginning to respond. They were hooking him up to the little baby heart-jumper-thingie, when he started to come to and full-on cry. It was the sweetest sound I had ever heard. I had never been so happy to hear him cry.

In all we stayed in the hospital for 4 days. It was no fun for Baby J. More details on the hospital stay in a future post. In the end he was diagnosed with Roseola or Hangin Tigdas as they call it. The seizure was brought on by the spike in temp. The tendency to get seizures with fever is genetic, as a child I would go into convulsions when I get a fever. They are called Febrile Seizures and can happen to a small percentage of babies (up to 6 years old). Generally they do not cause long-term damage to the brain, but they are terrifying to see.

If you are one of the unlucky ones, and you see your child going into a seizure, just remember to put him on his side and don't try to feed him medicine. Don't put anything in his mouth. WHat you do is you wait. If it lasts more than 3-4 minutes then drive to the hospital. After the seizure, try to bring his temp down with a tepid sponge bath.

It's horrible that there is nothing to do but wait and watch it take over your child's body, but that is all that can be done. A generous friend whose child had seizures told me that it helps to think the child will not remember the seizure and will not remember any pain if they felt it at all.