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Nightime Seizure?

Last night my 18 month old son had some odd nighttime/sleep twitching and jerking. I was trying to get him to sleep at his normal time, but he is a little stuffy right now and he was having a hard time getting down last night. As I was rocking him, his body just seemed really agitated. He kept doing this thing with his right hand that seemed like he was trying to itch his other arm. Then as he was falling into sleep, his body startled, almost like a newborn would. This pattern of his right hand twitching and then startled happened several times before he fell into a deeper sleep.

I had him laying on my chest and I was rocking when he finally fell asleep. I just held him there for a bit to make sure he was really out before I put him in his crib. After a few minutes of being asleep, I felt his whole body tense up and then his feet and his hands made these really fast almost fluttering type jerks. It lasted probably less than 20 seconds from when his body tensed to when the fluttering stopped. About a minute of two later it happened again and lasted about as long.

At this point I decided to lay him down so I could try to see better what was going on.  After a few minutes it happened again. He was on his tummy and his hands were under his body, but his feet looked almost like as if he was doing a flutter kick for swimming.  I couldn't see his hands, but could see his elbows kind of twitch in and out, so I assume his hands were doing the same thing. After that one, I ran to get my phone and made a video of the next episode. The video I got is hard to see, but you can definitely see his body tense and then his arms twitch and feet flutter.

R usually sleeps through the night, but last night woke up 3 times. When he would wake, he would kind of yell out and then start crying. Each time, getting him to sleep we went through the same experience as above.

My 4 year old son has a benign myoclonic disorder of sleep. Meaning that he has lots and lots of twitching, but it is not seizure activity. We confirmed this with an EEG. Although his disorder is not seizure activity, it is very disruptive to his sleep, so we have a sleep doctor that follows him and he takes medication to help lessen the nighttime twitching.

Moral of the story... I know what a benign myoclonic twitch looks like and this looked totally different. With my 4 y.o. the twitch kind of travels around his body affecting one extremity at a time. So a hand will twitch and then a foot and then maybe a hand again, but never all at once like I saw last night in my LO.

I have a call into this pedi, but I wanted to see what the mama's here thought too. I know there are several people that have children with seizures that I am hoping are around. Thanks in advance for any thoughts you have.
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Re: Nightime Seizure?

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    I don't have any concrete facts for you but my DD has myoclonic jerks as well.  The issue that I have with it is that she also has epilepsy and according to her last VEEG, 90% of her seizures are while she is sleeping and they are sub-clinical. I've mentioned these jerks to her neurologist and she isn't convinced that the twitches have anything to do with her seizures.  I'm not as certain.  My DD also wakes up crying every single night between 2-3am.
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    My DD also has these jerks- several times at night.  The EEGs did not show activity (both 1 hour sleep deprived and 48 hour), however, recently, I have been watching her, and they seem to be getting worse (or, at least, not better, as I would expect moving towards neuro maturity).  She is 22 months old.  Our neuro now wants us to do an ambulatory EEG, but my DH didn't want to, because we just had both EEGs done in the last 2 months, and he hates having our DD get the leads on.  But, it may come to that.  Can you try to video tape again tonight, and use a soft light to help see and send to neuro?
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    I got a video that I used an online video editor thing to brighten up so you could actually see it (that is the best I could do from my work computer). If you watch at about 25 seconds you can see a shorter episode that he had. The other episodes, that I of course didn't get on video, were longer than this. You can't see when he tensed up because I was moving around and the angle is funny.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUOUDq-l14c
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    birdie_1010birdie_1010 member
    edited August 2013
    I watched R for about 15 minutes after he fell asleep last night and then again for about 10 minutes after he fell asleep when he woke up at 4:00. No weird twitching, just normal twitching as far as I am concerned, last night.

    We have his 18 month well check on Monday so I am going to bring that youtube video to share with his pedi.

    ETA: If anyone familiar with seizures/myoclonus wants to watch the video posted above and give your feedback I wouldn't mind. :)
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    Just wondering if you had found out anything.  I watched your video and it looks pretty similar to what my DD does, and she had an EEG which caught this, and said it wasn't seizures (but, I am sure this is very specific to the kiddo).  Just wondering if you had gotten any more info!  :)
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