Baby with Vacant Episodes

[afunnythinghappenedontheway]

Hi All

Just after a little reassurance. My beautiful 5 month old DD has started over the last 48 hours have periods of being vacant/ not engaging. These last about 20 to 30 secs and nothing seems to break it. When she comes round she is very tired and seems a little disoriented. She has been sleeping more than usual but other than this everything else with her is fine. She has seen the GP this morning and he has done an urgent neurological referral and used the words epilepsy. If anything changes he wants us to take her to A & E. Does anyone have any experience of this in their children? What could this mean long term?

I am a bit of a mess over it all to be honest and my mind is racing 100 to the dozen of all the things that could be wrong. Many thanks in advance for your help/comments x

Thank you for all your kind messages. We are now home after 6 nights in patient. My DD has every test going - EEG, ECG, blood tests galore and a brain MRI under general anaesthetic. All have returned normal and bizarrely the episodes stopped two weeks to the day they started. Whilst we are under no illusion that they may return and have been told we are looking possibly looking at an epilepsy diagnosis down the line, for the moment we are just enjoying being back at home together. We have a few further tests in the coming weeks and a follow up appointment with the paediatrician. I am trying very hard not to read every move my little one makes but this is proving to be quite hard. We have the option to return to the hospital at any time we think things are going south again. I would be grateful for any stories which are similar- it maybe that we never know what caused it and it may never happen again - I can live with that if that is the case.

Hi,

my 6 month old has started this, what was the end result for you now years later?

Hi

Wow this was a surprise to have a post given it is almost 5 years to the day. My DD went on to be diagnosed with a form of infantile epilepsy which is genetic and had been caused by a faulty gene on my part. She was on epilepsy medicine for 3 years but has now been weaned off and is absolutely fine and seizure free. There is always a risk it might return but we know what we are dealing with. She is the happiest bundle of fun and I thank the universe regularly for our throw of the dice as it could have been very different. If you have any concerns about your baby please speak to your GP and ask for a referral to paediatrics. I cannot fault the care we were given and the support in what ended up being a very difficult year for us - she had a few hospital stays and it was a very worrying time. I hope everything turns out ok.

Thank you so much for getting back to me. Glad everything has worked out for you! We will definitely go and see the GP. We recently had a bug last week and GPs initial thought was she had caught that and this was her body’s response. I’ll will go back if it persists. Thank you again.