Parenting after LT TTC #4

[Janie71]

Hi All,

Firstly I just want to apologise in advance for the big me post, but just need to get this out.

As most of you know, Jasmine contracted a viral upper rispiratory infection within the first few days of starting at nursery and everytime we think she is over it she relapses again. On Thursday nursery called me about 2:30pm and let me know that Jasmine had a rash across her stomach and back, but apart from that no temparture and seemed in good spirits. Come 4:30pm when DH picked her up her temp had gone up to 38 degrees and they gave her some panadol. I left work early and we went to the GP who looked at the rash and said that she could not rule out chicken pox, but it was too early to really tell so to come back on Saturday and she would have another look.

She went to sleep at about 8:30pm after some nurofen to bring down her temp and all appeared good. At about 1:30am she woke up and appeared just a bit unsettled. I took her temp and she was quite hot at 39.7. So gave her more panadol then a breast feed and took her temp again. It really hadn't come down so I gave her some nurofen. Started to breast feed again and she was a little fussy. So sent DH downstairs to get her water bottle and right at that moment Jasmine gave me this look and then went all stiff in my arms - and then started to have a seizure. She was full body shaking, eyes rolling back in head and not breathing properly. I just yelled for DH to come back and call 000. The next few minutes waiting for the ambulance are a bit of a blur, but I can remember just screaming that she wasn't breathing properly and what should I do. They told us to put her on the bed and wait for the fit to finish. I was panicing as I could see she wasn't breathing the way she should, but I couldn't give her mouth to mouth as she was still fitting. The seizure went for about 8 minutes, then she went unconcious. I put her in the recovery position and had to keep an eye on her breathing which slowly started to return to normal. Finally the ambulance arrived 10 minutes after we called - luckily 000 stayed on the phone with us the whole time as I was FREAKING. It took her about 5 minutes before she started to react to stimulation. They had her on oxygen as her levels were pretty low due to the 8 minutes of not breathing effectively.

So we got taken down to RCH to get her checked out and they confirmed that it is about 99% likely that she had a febrile convulsion brought on by the fever, brought on by the virus. They checked her out and observed her for a while and then we were allowed to go home with instructions to go back to GP on Saturday. Again she confirmed the above and said that Jasmine is now at a slightly increased risk of having epilepsy, but there is not any point testing for it unless she has a fit where there is no fever present. My family has a history of febrile convulsions with me having one when I was about 4, my older sister had one, and one of my younger sisters had loads of them up until she grew out of them when she was 5.

Jasmine is in pretty good spirits now, although she keeps freaking us out as her temp is still all over the shot. We have been adviced that we just have to try and keep her temp down, although the doctor at the hospital said there is very little you can do to prevent it from happening - in other words if they are going to have a convulsion, they are going to have one regardless of what you do to bring their temp down.

We are hopeful that this is just a one of occurence, and Jasmine will never go through this again. We are keeping her home this week (DH will work from home on the days that I am at work) just to make sure that she fully gets over the virus before going back to nursery.

Not the greatest start to my return to work - I am so lucky that my work is so supportive. The only thing that really annoys me are the damn parents who send their sick kids to daycare when they should keep them at home! I know this can be difficult at times and maybe it is the employers of these parents that I should have a go at more than the parents as it is probably them pressuring for them to be at work.

Anyhow, I have just written a novel, but it is nice to get it out as I just keep seeing flashes of the look on Jasmine's face when the fit started and also her not being able to breath properly.

Janie and Jasmine xxx

P.S. Good news is - Jasmine does not have Chicken Pox!