It happened again, my baby boy got a sudden high fever, and had a seizure. The night before he felt a little extra warm at bed time. This triggered my worry. I didn’t sleep at all the night before, watching the monitor.

We had been giving him fever reducers all day. It was nap time, and we slept through his next dose. He woke up warm and was having little jerky moments as he woke up. I was worried he was having little seizures. So I called Karl and asked him to hurry home.

I began to give him a double dose of the fever reducer (ibuprofen and acetaminophen) when he started to seize. It was pretty awful.  He looked like a robot who was glitching out because someone dumped water on him. His lips turned blue, and I was just helplessly watching and saying over and over, “Mama is here, I love you, you’re okay, you got this, it’ okay.”

Thankfully I was able to stay calm this time. I was able to hold him and watch him. I set a timer. So I knew that it lasted about a minute. Which is not considered a severe seizure. It felt a lot longer.

When Karl got home, we called the doctor’s office, got a sitter, and headed to the Pediatrician.

Lucas:

Because this was he second seizure, there were several other things that we had to check for. The sent us to get some blood tests to rule out stuff like meningitis and bacterial infection.

That was traumatic. It took 4 adults to hold him still enough to get the blood draw they needed. He screamed and squirmed the whole time. They took so much blood! 🙁

We also were referred to a pediatric neurologist to make sure he was really good.

 

We thankfully had his 30 month appointment the next week.

We saw our NP Ruth Caldwell and she said he was doing A OK!

Since he had these seizure, and I was worried about his language development, she gave us a referral to Kids on the move.

He was fine, but I think the experience was a little scary for him. He has been “sleeping” on the floor in our room a lot since it happened. And no one sleeps well when that happens. He always goes down into his bed, but then he will wake up and freak out, and come and lay down in our room. He usually comes in and wakes me up.

The other morning:

Dead asleep, no matter how much I poked him.

A couple of weeks after the incident, we made it to the pediatric neurologist.

 

Dr. Clint R Nelson, MD.

He must be a dad or an uncle, because he was really great with Lucas.

Things I learned at the appointment:

1. Lucas will likely have more seizures. Like 3-5 more. 🙁
2. As long as the seizures are under 5 minutes, there is nothing at all to worry about.
3. Over 5 minutes is probably fine, but over 10 minutes, we should go in to the Emergency room.
4. Most kids grow out of these by the time the are in kindergarten, or when they are 6.  When the are 7, it is consider epilepsy. Only about 3% of kids who have these febrile seizures end up having epilepsy.

Love this little boy. No more fevers, no more seizures.