Okay…I’m having a freaked out preemie-parent moment.

I need help distinguishing a possible seizure.  My daughter Brooke, is 11 months actual, 8 months adjusted and has never shown any visible signs of a seizure. She was 26wks5days old when born and had clear brain scans for most of her hospital stay, until a couple weeks before discharge when they discovered a grade I bleed, that “resolved” itself several weeks later.

She’s had an upper respiratory infection for about two weeks now and was tested for RSV which came back negative.  She hasn’t had a fever throughout her entire cold, and still doesn’t.

Tonight, while putting her to sleep she had these (appeared totally involuntary) movements of her head and an arm (maybe both?) that appeared seizure-like to my husband and I. She did about 3-5 of these movements (like twitches only more noticeable) and then stopped. Moved around “normally”, trying to get comfortable to go to sleep and would do it again. She did it about three times before I rushed downstairs to get my husband. When he came upstairs she did it once (but less movements in a row – one to two). Then once she did it and it appeared to include her whole body. A whole body twitch.

I have gone over the events of the day and I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary, except that she was particularly tired after her afternoon nap and wasn’t eager to get up. She was also a little sweaty and clammy. I’ve never seen her sweaty and clamming or want to continue sleeping after having slept for several hours. I don’t know how long she would have slept. I woke her up though, because I was uncomfortable with how sleepy she was. However, once she was up and awake she appeared fine. Before I saw the twitching, I thought perhaps we were seeing the end of her cold/resp. infection with the sleeping and sweating. Now I don’t know.

The other two things are probably not related, but I’ll mention them none the less, in case it makes anyone think of anything. Today, when heating up her baby food, there might have been a spark in the microwave (it has caught fire before) and after I witnessed the twitching, I feared that she might have been poisoned with some of the metal in the microwave. As in I wondered if some miniscule metal flakes landed in the jar that I fed her.  I did look in the jar and didn’t notice anything before I fed her…but now I am kicking myself for not throwing out the jar. I called poison control and they said they thought that was unlikely and that metal poisoning usually involves GI problems first. Sound familiar to anyone?

The other thing that is a bit different is that she is watching more TV than usual, because I have am giving her Albuterol treatments roughly every 4-6 hours since she has had her infection/cold. I have her watch Baby Einstein videos in her chair while I give her the treatment. We have a HUGE screen (I want to say 60” or so) and on top of that,  just before bed tonight she watched a Baby Einstein DVD that was playing on one half of the computer screen, while I was working on the other half of the screen, and she was sitting on my lap.  I was wondering if she could have been overstimulated by this?  Anybody have a child display “seizure like” movements after having been overstimulated?

Please, any help/advice/etc. would be so helpful and reassuring. I was just thinking about how “over” so much of this preemie stuff I was (and Brooke was) …and this happens…and to my surprise…I broke down emotionally. It’s like a pin prick can cause an avalanche of emotions. Please don’t be shy if you think any of this could be signs of a seizure. This is what I need to know. The Ped oncall said that to her it didn’t sound like a seizure. She gave me these guidelines for tonight: If she twitches for about 20secs or longer or If during her twitching I am unable to “calm”/stop it by touching her torso. Does that sound sufficient?

We’re not planning on taking her to the ER tonight…but should we? I don’t want to put through any more tests, if they are not necessary.

Lauren
Mom to Brooke (26.5wks – 11 mos actual; 8 mos adjusted)