That thing Nathan did on Tuesday

I had my first mommy freak out yesterday. And when I say freak out, I mean I seriously freaked the f*ck out. So the other day, Nathan had what looked like a rhythmic spasm. Almost like a little seizure. He had his arms to his sides, and he squeezed his fists and reacted like someone poured water down his back. He did this rhythmically three or four times. Now, priding myself on not being a freak out mommy, I said, "oh babies, so cute with their little twitches." I mentioned it to josh.

Well a couple days later, I thought well let me google this. I typed in "infant spasms" and wouldn't you know it, there were some videos that looked like what he did.


They also said infant spasms tend to start at around 4 months (Nathan is four months). Immediately my stomach lurched and I felt like I had to vomit as I read on that the prognosis for these kids was mental retardation, autism and if we are lucky to be in 10 percent of good outcomes we will have only mild impairment. I shat my pants. My hands shook as I googled website after website waiting for someone to say, "oh most of the time it's normal or nothing to be concerned about." No they all said our baby was shit up the creek. I called josh down, had him watch the youtube videos, he ran upstairs to do his own research. An hour later, I'm frantic. It felt like our life we had imagined for our boy was over.

So we are sitting on the couch. Talking about the implications. Should we wake him up and go to the ER now? Will he only have mild impairment? We tell each other that we will love him no matter what. Josh has me lay down and reinact what Nathan did. I said, it was almost like a chill or a shudder. So then I google Infant shudder. And would you believe it, those videos were a better match for what he did. Apparently they will shudder if they have reflux or even when they are peeing. It is commonly mistaken for a seizure in fact.

Here you can see the shudder at 12 seconds



You can see the shudder at 6 seconds


I'm still freaked out. He "shuddered" several times in a row like a seizure, but he didn't flail out his arms and bring them in close like a seizure. And then there are videos where the seizure is mild too. I wish I could find someone to say that you could shudder rhythmically, but so far they seem to be singletons. And now I'm starting to get confused on what I saw completely because of the videos. I'm going to call the doctor today. I want her to tell me it is nothing and we have a laugh.