My 11 month old boy woke up this morning at around 5:30. He was strangely still, and very quietly repeating the word “maa-ma. maa-ma.”
He was extremely hot to the touch, and on taking his temperature we found it to be 39.7C (103.5F).
Normally he wakes up in an energetic mood, babbling away in his own unique language, and eager to start crawling all over place looking for electrical cords to pull on, and coins/paperclips/balls of lint on the floor to eat. But he was very calm and lethargic this morning.
A while later, after I had picked him up and was walking around the apartment with him, his body started convulsing, his arms and legs became stiff, and he looked like he was trying to vomit. He also didn’t look like he was breathing properly.
I was very scared.
He came out of it within 30 seconds or so, but he still looked dazed.
My wife and I took him to the hospital, and were relieved to see that even on the way there his temperature was already coming down a bit. All signs at this point are that he has a virus called Roseola, that this virus is very common, and that everything will be fine. As of tonight he still has a fever, but we understand that this is normal, and that it should go away in a few days.
If you have a kid between 5 and 15 months, and you don’t know what Roseola is --or even more importantly, if you don’t know what “febrile seizures” are-- please take just a few minutes to read up on it. These were links that I found particularly helpful, but whatever medical website you trust (or even just wikipedia) will give you the basics.
http://www.drgreene.com/21_1173.html
http://www.drgreene.com/21_1087.html
It turns out that almost all children get this virus by the time they are 3 (and that most of us have it living in our bodies right now), but that in many cases it has no outward effect. Many babies do experience the effects though.
For those of you who are familiar with this already, my apologies for the sensationalist title of this thread – a title that I chose in order to get people’s attention. But you have to understand that my target audience here consists of people like me – who have babies but never happened to learn about this. I can’t tell you how much I would have preferred to have read about this yesterday, as opposed to today (after my boy had had the febrile seizure). From what I understand, there is nothing I could have done to prevent it, but it would kept me from being so scared when it happened. Hopefully this post will help a few people who read it (and spend a few minutes reading the links) to at least know what to expect if this happens, and to know that it in almost all cases it is not nearly as dangerous at it looks when you see it for the first time.
Cheers fellow parents,
Hobbes
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