New Years Eve terror

I'll start this entry by saying that the baby is alright now. There's a happy ending (so far).

New years eve, the kids and wife and I decided to venture out to eat, and take a run to our favorite thrift store. We ate an Old Country buffet, and everyone was in good spirits. We drove to the thrift store. The baby had woke up, and wanted fed. The wife gave him about 1 ounce of formula, and he went back to sleep. The wife had gone her own way in the store: she had the baby and Logan - I had Lance. When we finished shopping, we headed out to the car. The baby woke up, and spit up. He spit up enough that we needed to change his outfit. SO the wife changes his otufit and diaper - and he spits up more. Then we notice that he's rather unresponsive. He's alive - and breathing - just not alert. We thought it might be that he was sleepy, but we were still worried. Rather than the 20 minute trip home, we decided to divert to her parents house, not more than 5 minutes travel time away. Figured we could get him out of his carseat, and get a better assessment. We made it about 1 minute down the road when the baby started spewing again - in large volumes. The wife was turned backwards in her seat, and I could hear the baby barfing, and coughing. I pulled over, and got the baby out. His throw up was milky - same color as formula - but God, there was so much of it. And the baby was worse. Much worse. No eye contact, no tracking of his eyes. pupils fixed and dilated - breathing was low and deep, and no muscle control whatsoever.

We had no cell phone - so we jumped back in the van, and drove a block down the road. I ran in and called 911. Within about 2-3 minutes, we had a firetruck and ambulance there. The baby started to regain some of his color (he went ghostly pale) once they put him on oxygen. But he was still very unresponsive.

We get to the local children's hospital within about 30 minutes, waited in the waiting room for about 3 hours, and once they finally got us a room, he started to snap out of it. He was able to lift his own head, his eyes we open and alert, he'd track us as we moved, smiled, laughed, cried once he realized how hungry he was. It was as if he had been short circuited for 3 hours. He never lost consciousness, but 'woke up' 3 hours later.

We saw no visible signs of seizure. No eyes rolling, no body flailing. The Dr's told us that at this age (3 months old), seizures in infants tend to be violent. He had not fallen on his head, no blunt force trauma, no signs of seizure. They monitored him for 2-3 hours after that, and ended up finding out nothing. At least not what caused it. They did an ekg of his heart, and it came back normal. They tested his blood, and his sugar level was fine. Now, he had just gotten breast fed right before they did the blood test, so that may have altered the results. He is up to date with his shots - but had not received a vaccination in over a month or so. In searching online for similar symptoms, I've come across sites with parental horror stories of similar happenings within hours or days of the child being vaccinated.

I dont know. We have no idea what happened to our baby.


To recap, in case you're reading this from a Google search, and have experienced the same thing...

• Within 30 minutes of feeding, the baby started to throw up. No projectile vomiting, just a gurgling, drolling throw up.
• The amount of throw up was large. No visible object, like a button or pill.
• Lack of muscle control. No neck control, not able to hold up head, not able to clench fist of fingers.
• Breathing was slow and faint
• Eyes were fixed and pupils were very dilated. If any eye movement, it was sluggish. Eye lids were almost shut - just barely open, like he was peeking.
• No fever - body was not hot . Body temperature seemed to drop, and particularly his cheeks got cold and clammy.
• Oxygen seemed to bring back some color to his face, but did NOT effect his unresponsiveness.
• 3 hours later, (give or take), he snapped out of it as if someone had thrown a switch.
• Once he had recovered, his heart rate, respiration rate, and pulse ox levels were well within normal parameters.

All the trouble started around 3:30-4pm. We were discharged from the hospital around 11:30pm.

So far, the baby has been eating and sleeping well. He is attentive, responsive, and appears to be back to normal. We have a motion monitor on his bed (with an alarm). But we're clueless what happened - or if it might strike again.