A Scary Few Days

We had a scary few days with Logan. We have been noticing him having these jerking episodes. Lindsey looked it up and it turns out that it is called the Startle Reflex (also known as the Moro reflex). For those that do not know, it is something that happens when the baby is startled out of sleep and they start making these jerking motions.

The other day he had one of these episodes and it lasted for awhile longer than the other ones. Lindsey had to run over and grab his arms and push them to his chest to get him to stop. Later in the day, he did it again so Lindsey called the pediatrician and they said to bring him in for a checkup.

The pediatrician wanted to schedule Logan for an EEG, but the soonest was May 13th in Sharon. She told us that if we saw another episode to go to Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital ER. That was definitely a little terrifying. He had a minor episode that night, so we decided to take him there in the morning.

We got there around 10:30 and they had us in a room fairly quickly. From there we saw two doctors and they had some concerns. They ordered blood work, urine tests, and a spinal tap. Then a neurologist came in to talk with us. They wanted an MRI & EEG.

They put us in a room on the seventh floor and in a few hours we had seen a bunch of doctors. The more doctors that we saw, the scarier it became. They ruled out meningitis and sepsis, but they were afraid he was having seizures.

This morning the neurology team came to see us and they said that the MRI was normal and the EEG did not show any seizures. The head neurologist thinks Logan has a prolonged Moro reflex with benign sleep myoclonus (which is that spasm you get when you start to fall asleep). He wants to see Logan back in a month or so to get another EEG and confirm that he is not having seizures.

Through the whole thing, Logan was a trooper. He screamed when they inserted the catheter, but for the most part, he was fine. He was sick of the wires connected to him by the middle of the second day. But that is to be expected.

The Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital was absolutely amazing. They kept us updated at all times. We saw at least eleven doctors (maybe it was twelve, not totally sure). Hell, five different neurologists saw us. It was annoying that Lindsey had to keep repeating the story and everything, but the fact that the level of care was so high was reassuring. Also, they never made us feel like we were overreacting. They told us that this is fairly normal, but that we did the right thing by bringing him in. Another thing I loved, when the doctors came in, they were never on a laptop. They never spent all of their time typing on a chart. They actually spoke to us.

This is in no way a criticism of the doctors that have to do that sort of thing. My doctor does it, our baby doctor did it. The laptop charting while talking to a patient seems to be the more efficient way to do things from a hospital perspective, but from a patient’s perspective? One-on-one interaction is better. It makes us feel like we matter.

Anyways, that was our past few days. We are home now. Payton is happy to have her little brother back. Samson is glad to be home. Mommy & Daddy are very tired.