Member-only story
My baby had a seizure
Here’s what I wish I would have known
We spent the weekend on vacation in upstate New York visiting friends, eating pizza and sleeping in a musty hotel room. On the flight home, Frankie was quiet and lethargic — an unusual temperament for her. We wrote it off as travel side effects.
When I got home from work the next day I nursed her and she swiftly fell asleep. She was warm so I stripped her down to her diaper and put her in her crib. About an hour later I began to get nervous and told my husband we should go wake her up and take her temperature.
Mom instinct is a thing you can feel.
Frankie was groggy when I pulled her out of the crib and lay her down on our bed. We took her temperature and saw that it was 103.3°. As we huddled around her deciding what to do, she twitched.
And then she didn’t stop.
I held my 10-month-old in my arms as her little body shook, her head turned to the side and eyes looking away from me. I didn’t know what was happening. I thought she was dying. I prayed out loud — something I’ve never done before.
My husband calmly told me she was having a seizure, and I yelled to him to call 911. As I suspect is common in emergencies, it took him no fewer than three hours to figure out how to unlock my phone and place a call to the easiest phone number anybody has ever learned.
While he was on the phone with the paramedics, I held Frankie and told her that I was there. Her little body thrashed in my arms — a feeling I hope I will soon forget.
About a minute after it began, the seizure subsided and something I later learned is called postictal kicked in. It’s the state of consciousness that occurs after a seizure, and it is terrifying.
I could hear the sirens already.
Frankie lay limp on the bed and took hurried shallow breaths. Her eyelids fluttered. The paramedics ran up the stairs to the bedroom as I told her over and over to stay with me, like you see in the movies.
In the ambulance ride to Children’s Hospital, I learned that Frankie had what is called a febrile seizure, a convulsion caused by a dramatic spike in body temperature.
