I had a very scary situation yesterday with my 13 month old daughter. My husband and I took our two children to the mall indoor playground. Everything was going fine and both my daughers were having a very good time playing with other children in this playground. My husband left to use the bathroom at one point. While my husband was gone, my youngest daughter was in my arms pushing to be put down on the floor so she could walk around again, when suddenly her eyes rolled back in her head and she went limp. I tried repeatedly to "wake her up" by talking to her, shaking her gently, and bouncing her lightly in my arms. I'm not sure how long she was out, but it seemd like a significant amount of time. I asked a local store employee to please call someone for help when my husband came back from the restroom. He took her and at this point she seemed like she was beginning to come around again though she still wouldn't or couldn't open her eyes. At no time did she stop breathing, nor did she suffer any kind of trauma that would logically cause something like this. We took our daughter to ER where they ran blood tests, X-Rays and a CT Scan - all of which came back negative for anything. Has anyone ever had anything like this happen or know of someone who has and can they tell me about their experience. Our fear is that she may have had a petite mal seizure but with the CT scan coming up negative, we don't know what to think. We've scheduled a follow up appointment with her pediatrician but any advice or sharing of other experiences would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
D.
Thank you so much everyone... I took her to the pediatrition and she believes it was a seizure. we have an MRI scheduled on thursday and will go from there.
thanks everyone!
Diane,
Since you have had all of the appropriate medical test and they are all negative I would agree w/ the other responder- it REALLY sounds like a breath holding spell.
Here is a great article on the subject.
http://www.chw.edu.au/parents/factsheets/breathj.htm
We see it in the office- especially when giving shots or doing strep tests! It is scarey, but normal!
D.
Is almost sounds like what a friend of mine's daughter does. It's where they hold their breath. It's not anything they do on purpose, but they do eventually outgrow it. The fact that it happened when she was upset makes me think this might be the case.
My friend is also on Mamasource, so I'll make sure she looks for your question.
Also, this month's Child magazine has a little something about it in one of their Q & A sections.
Hi D.
I would try to find a neurologist that works with children. she may have epilepsy. I have this and did not start having seizures until I was 11 but i'm sure it could start at any age.
How scary!! I'm sure you were terrified! I hope she doesn't experience that again. If she does have epilepsy she will require medication, and there are very little side effects from Tegretol.
J.
You have a lot of good suggestions here. Just wondering if she had any immunizations in the past two weeks. Sometimes, one of the side effects can be small seizures, especially with the DPT shot. Just wondering. My grandson had something similar at soon after his six month shots. He is ok now.
I would ask your pediatrician about an electrocardiogram to look for Long Q-T syndrome. It's a relatively common heart condition that can cause fainting. You can find out more information at www.americanheart.org in the "Heart & Stroke Encyclopedia."
You can also probably Google "long Q-T syndrome."
The "Q-T" interval represents a segment of time during a heart beat.
Check seriously into what Maggie had to say about the long QT syndrome. I had a co worker who had an incident with her kid, she gave her CPR, got checked out and found out all her kids had and so did she. It comes out in stressful times. (exercise). It needs to ruled out.
My brother used to do this when he was an infant (30 years ago). It took them a long time to figure out that he was severely anemic. I hope you find out soon what is wrong with your precious little one.
My brother had seizures as a boy and a CT scan will only show a seizure if they are having one while the scan is taking place. I remember they had to do a lot of scans/tests to diagnose the seizures and EEG test was the one that found it. If you think it may have been a seizure, have your doctor refer you to a speciallist. Babys don't faint for no reason.
