Wednesday, September 29, 2010

baby EEG

it was awful. i hope none of you ever have to hold your terrified, screaming, crying, coughing, hiccuping baby still while someone they don't know does things they don't understand to them.

here is the run down of our day. it didn't start off as planned. typically arden sleep until about 5, nurses, and goes back to sleep until 7. this morning, she slept straight till 6 and then was up for the day. i decided to roll with it, figuring she will nap earlier in the morning and be even more ready to nap at the appointment.

well, she did nap earlier. she fell asleep around 8:30 when i was finishing my morning run. again, let's roll with it. i thought i would do an extra loop on the trail we had just run. she would hopefully sleep for an hour. all would be good. nope. she woke up half an hour later.

now, my sweet baby typically goes for three hours from morning wake up to morning nap. same between the naps. so that puts us at an afternoon nap of 12. not gonna work. our EEG appointment was at 1. we needed to keep her awake until they were running the test. freakin' fantastic. oh, and she is getting a cold.

we have a sleepy, grumpy, sniffling, sneezing baby to which they need to stick electrodes. ha.

we got to the hospital at 12:30 to check in. arden was doing ok. i was able to keep her awake in the car while anna drove. she's doing good, except when she is in my lap. my lap equals milk which equals get ready to sleep.

the technician was very nice. tried to get arden to warm to her. had toys ready. arden wasn't having any of it. we laid her down on the bed and had to keep her relatively still. the tech began measuring and marking arden's head. cue freak-out. even though she wasn't being hurt, arden did not like the lady messing with her. i thought that once the electrodes were on arden would be allowed to play and then would take a nap. what we actually did was much better. the tech asked if i was BFing. when i answered in the positive, she said i could lay down on the bed with arden and just nurse her to sleep. that's it. it was perfect.

i laid down with arden, making sure the video camera wasn't obstructed. the tech set up a strobe light near arden's face. arden calmed right down. she fell asleep within 5 minutes. i even fell asleep. the total testing time was 40 minutes and arden slept for 30 minutes of it. she wasn't even fazed by the strobe flashing in her face (that was only during the first 5-7 minutes).

after the test, we had to get all the electrodes off her head and clean the markings off. again, she got really upset, but it was quick. we decided that she definitely deserved a treat for making it through this ordeal (and we did too). we walked over to an awesome ice cream shop. i had remembered that they had frozen yogurt before, and we were going to get arden fro yo when she first started walking. they didn't have fro yo anymore, but they did have watermelon sorbet and kid cones.

arden loved it. she chowed down. sticking her face right into the sorbet. she ate more than i expected her to. the cone was a little smaller than a typical cone. she ate it down to the last half inch. the only help she had from us was making sure the sorbet didn't melt all over.

she fell asleep on the walk back to the car. she didn't even wake when anna transferred her to the carseat. she proceed to sleep for an hour. my poor baby was wiped out.

we won't have the results from the test until next week most likely. the tech told us that the neurologist that will be reviewing the info is the top doctor for epilepsy (one of the potential issues). after he is done, he'll pass his findings on to our pediatrician, who will then call us. we just need to wait. sigh. i really hope that whatever we find out is not major. no, what i truly hope we find is nothing. i hope the doctor tells us that these two incidents are minor and something she will out grow, right now.




3 comments:

  1. thank goodness everyone got through the testing basically unscathed!!! now we wait...
    love to you all...
    Denise

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  2. It sounds so stressful! I'm so glad that she was able to fall asleep. Hoping that everything turns out fine!

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  3. oh, poor baby! we'll be thinking of her and hoping for good results.

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