It's HER fault! The kids and I had gone up to visit my parents for the afternoon and she was fine. She fell asleep in the car on the way home and woke up screaming about 2 minutes from the house. We got home and I got her out of the car and she was fine. It was a little after 9 so I changed her and put her to bed. She wasn't having any of that and screamed until I came and got her up. I held her for a few minutes and just as she was about to drift off I put her back down.
Nope, didn't work. She screamed again. So I got her up and she hung out with John and I for awhile. At about 11 she was getting droopy eyed so I took her back to bed. Within a minute of me leaving the room she was LOSING IT! I picked her up to calm her down (which normally does the trick right away), uh-uh. She screamed so hard and so loud I was sure the neighbors could hear her...yet Max, Abby, and Lucy slept through it all! This screaming lasted for about 10-15 minutes.
During this time I was holding her and walking with her and she would arch her back and go stiff as a board then curl up into a tight little ball in my arms. John tried to take her and hold her and she wasn't having any of that either. By this time I was freaking out a little (okay, more than a little) and all of a sudden she just stopped screaming and took a big breath, sighed and laid her head on my shoulder. She went to sleep. I held her as she slept for about an hour then laid her back down around midnight.
About 15 - 20 minutes later she fussed/cried again but I was able to calm her down without holding her. At 1am she was awake and screaming in full force again. It was the same as before with the stiff body then curling up. I was patting her back and doing all the tricks (you learn a few when you've had 4 kids) to get a burp out in case this was just a massive gas bubble. It would just make her more upset.
By this point I was convinced something was wrong. I knew I couldn't take her to the ER in the condition she was in and John couldn't come with me because the other 3 were sleeping. We made the decision to call 911. A whole host of things was running through my head at this point as to what could be the problem. My biggest fear, by the way she was moving her body, was that it could be appendicitis. She obviously couldn't tell us what hurt so we made the decision we felt was best.
Just before the paramedics arrived she did something that REALLY freaked me out. She stopped screaming, closed her eyes, and her head flopped back over my arm and she went limp. At this point I thought I might need an ambulance too! It only lasted a few seconds and her eyes opened and she was alert and not screaming. Paramedics and EMS arrived, they checked her out and breathing was normal, her stomach felt and sounded normal and there were no other signs that indicated she needed to be taken in the ambulance. They assured me it wasn't appendicitis because otherwise she'd still be screaming.
They told us that it was up to us whether or not we wanted to take her but since she was alert, making eye contact with them, watching them as they talked with us and checked her out, and then even saying "bye" to them (I guess she wanted them to leave), they felt like there wasn't an emergency (but they did assure us that we did the right thing by calling). John and I decided that we'd wait to see if she would go to sleep and how she did but that I would be taking her to see her dr. in the morning regardless of how the rest of the night went.
She fell asleep on me about 5 minutes after paramedics and EMS left. That was at about 1:45 this morning. I was so freaked out that I sat up holding her until about 3:30. I put her in her bed and she was fine for the rest of the night until I went to get her up at about 9:15 to go to her dr. app't.
Dr. S. checked her out and aside from the hives she has all over her back (which I mistook for an eczema outbreak) she is fine and dandy. Ears, lungs, belly, nose, throat are all clear. He said she probably went limp due to a breath holding episode which a lot of kids will do (Lucy does this when she starts screaming...lips turn blue before she takes a breathe to scream again then she's fine...well, except for the rest of the fit!). Anyway, so that's that. Don't know what started it. I had given her Tylenol when she wouldn't go down when we got home because I thought maybe her teeth were bothering her but I don't think it was teeth that caused all of that last night.
So now you know why I didn't blog last night...
