Parental Panic

So we had a bit of a scare last week.  I'll start with a little bit of back story.  When Penelope was in the NICU she would sometimes have trouble with clearing her spit up and the nurses would have to use the aspriator bulb to help her from choking.  The actually kept her a few extra days because of this.  When we took her home we were aware that this could happen, so we were prepared.  They told us she would arch her back and choke - so we knew what to look for...or so we thought.

Sean had told me that he had seen her do this a few times and he would pat her back and she would be fine.  Then 2 weeks ago I saw what we thought was her choking.  She would turn bright red, and she would go completely rigid - back arched, head turned to one side, arms and legs out straight.  When you pick her up she basically felt like a plastic doll - no flexability at all.  We just assumed that it was her choking but I was a little worried that it was something more.

Well, fast forward to this past Thursday morning.  Peanut was just waking up for the morning when she went stiff as a board and completely red.  Sean and I got her out of the bassinet and he patted her on the back and then we laid her down on the bed.  She was still very stiff and not very responsive.  That's when I was like...you know what, this doesn't seem like choking.  I think she's having a seizure!

I called her pediatrician and told her what happened and she said we should immediately go to the emergency room.  So we went, they checked her out, took blood (and she cried and cried and it was so sad!).  Then the doctor came in...

He said that based on her symptoms he's pretty sure she has sandifer syndrome. It is basically her reaction to extreme acid reflux.  Thankfully it isn't a seizure and should not have any long term negative effect on her health.  But it IS scary as crap!  They decided to keep her for 24 hours to monitor her.  So we spent the night in the hospital.  She seemed fine over night (but she doesn't have these episodes very often so I was pretty confident that they wouldn't see anything while we were there).

didn't think we'd be seeing the inside of a hospital so soon

Now she's on heartburn medicine and we're going to see how that goes.  It doesn't always work and she may have more of these episodes but I feel a lot better knowing what it is (that it wasn't seizures). I feel horrible that my little girl has such bad indegestion but the hope is that she'll grow out of it.

My poor baby....