The Night My Daughter Had Her Third Seizure, I Did Pattern Adjustments

It was 9pm and all was quiet at the sewing table. My husband was at an event in the city, the girls were asleep, and the apartment was clean save for shavings of 36x42 pattern printouts spread across the floor. With Jenny’s Princess Coat muslin finished, it was time to trace and cut the remaining pattern templates and make final fit adjustments before tearing into the fabric.

Though I usually listen to podcasts or audiobooks while sewing, I was headphone-free this evening. Math is not my strong suit: Aligning multiple differently-shaped 2D pieces to the same 3D body dimensions requires full concentration.

This I had. The shush of the shears, the crinkle of paper, the rasp of a dull pencil tracing down a line.

Then suddenly a rhythmic clicking, hiccuping noise. It was coming from the girls’ bedroom.

I hoped it wasn’t what I knew it was. Pushing open the girl’s bedroom door revealed my 16 month old daughter, stiff as a board in her crib with her head thrown back, her chin jutting out, arms and knotted fists raised like a zombie, convulsing in full body spasms.

There’s a kind of pain that means “stop”, and a kind that means “work harder (I learned this after the accident). There’s a kind of challenge that welcomes slow, effortful steps outside one’s comfort zone, and a kind that warrants outsourcing. There’s a kind of horror that stirs nightmarish catastrophe, and a kind that gets folded into daily rhythms. I’ll spoil the ending here by saying this was the latter. But no amount of prior knowledge prepares you for the sight of your baby having a seizure.

It occurred to me then that I was alone, and would need to handle this solo. My older daughter was asleep and I could not leave her asleep to bring the baby to the hospital. A neighbor down the street might be willing enough to help–her daughter also has seizures–but it was 9.45pm, and with two wakeful kids to settle, her sleep was at a premium. Not taking the baby to the hospital was not a question. The doctors had said febrile seizures were common but three times in two months? Her forehead was burning. The room was sweltering. Something had to be done now.

I coaxed the baby onto her side, slid the sleepsack out from under her still-seizing form and peeled off her pajamas. Running a finger across her lips I felt her jaw clenched shut. Doctors had said not to try to put a finger in her mouth while she was seizing but could she breathe? Being with her but powerless to help was unbearable. I left the room to scavenge in the linen closet for the thermometer. 103.2. What now? A wet washcloth might help cool her down. Would it stop the seizing? When would Philippe be home? I can’t do this alone.

Our neighbors across the hall have a baby too, and they might be awake. H picked up right away, and 15 seconds later there was a knock at the door.

It was S, H’s husband: H was putting the baby down and would come soon. I felt suddenly self-conscious. Nighttime, a sick kid, raw panic; such involuntary vulnerability was female territory. But help was help. I walked him to the bedroom and through what had happened so far and what I’d tried, listening to my whispered speech as if proof-reading a document for errors. The baby had stopped convulsing but was still burning hot. I picked her up. She was limp as a doll. I left S and carried her outside onto the street where it was cool and dark and lamp-lit. The pleasance of the night mocked us.

H was there when we came back inside. I lay the baby down on a towel on the living room floor and H knelt beside her. She dabbed at the baby with a wash cloth and cooed softly at her while I paced the apartment taking stock of what could and must be done; call an ambulance? Outrageously expensive, and besides the situation was stable: Close the girls’ bedroom door so as not wake up my older daughter? Certainly. Call my husband? No, in case he’s on the bike. Get ibuprofen and a bottle ready. All the while, H stayed by the baby tending to her with astonishing effortlessness, as if she were her own daughter, as if this was all normal as falling asleep.

S had lifted my pattern sheets off the floor and laid them on the table, presumably so they wouldn’t be in the way. Such a simple, pragmatic act. A voice in my head from far off in the impartial future made some sardonic comment about Ivy League educations and jobs that pay the big bucks. Ha ha ha. Instead of useless jokes, try showing a bit of gratitude. Not listening to a podcast was a fantastic bit of prescience. Jesus, what would’ve happened if...don’t think about it.

Piercing the fog of these inner squabbles was a full-throated cry. The baby was coming to. H moved aside while I brought the bottle of water to the baby’s lips and tipped it up. Water dribbled down her cheek, but her arms feebly reached for the bottle, a promising return of muscle tone. I propped her onto a cushion on her back and offered the pipette of ibuprofen, which she gulped down along with a chaser of water.

I looked up to see my husband in the doorway, looking flushed and handsome from the ride. Staring back at us with wide-eyes, he began pelting me with questions: “What happened, when did it start, what did it look like, how long did it last, what did you do, did you give her medicine, when, and why not before she went to bed? She had a fever earlier, why didn’t you give her the medicine then? You knew this would happen, how could you not give it to her?” He muttered questions like incantations as he hovered around me and the baby, while H still knelt and rubbed her back and shushed her and S darted around doing useful things, or else retreating to the wall like a tennis ball boy. Hatred of my husband and his doubt and his questions was congealing into cement. Why couldn’t he be calm? Why couldn’t he be helpful, like S and H? (Only when writing this later, with the objectivity of a night’s sleep, calm doctors at the ER, breakfast and a peaceful baby with a medicated fever and a good prognosis was I able to answer this question: They could be calm and helpful because it wasn’t their baby.)

My husband insisted on taking the baby to the hospital, and in my rage I knew one thing; only I should go. She was now in a moveable state and the sleeping older child had adult supervision; the conditions to leave had been met.

At some point S had asked if I wanted a ride to the hospital and in my default British don’t-be-a-bother way I’d said don’t worry it’s only 6 blocks but then suddenly looked up to see that he and H were gone and I despaired. I called again. He said he’d meet me in the lobby. We waited there while my husband filled the diaper bag with the pacifier and a sleeping bag and some books and a change of clothes, which I protested against for some reason, probably because it was his idea, and it was taking so long that S went to get the car.

The bag finally in hand, I carried the baby outside. She was now resting on me heavily, whimpering, her fingers curling gently around the neckline of my shirt. Peering up and down 8th Avenue, I saw S across the street bending over against the open drivers’ seat door of his station wagon. I crossed the deserted street and climbed into shotgun.

“This is embarrassing,” said S as I slid the seatbelt under the baby on my chest; “but as I ran out to the car I rolled my ankle and heard a pop.”

There was nothing to say to this. I was sorry it happened, but too grateful for his company and urgency to offer it back. As he turned onto Prospect Park West to head south I said, my voice starting to break; “My husband’s mad at me.”

“He’s scared.”

“Everyone’s always mad at me.”

There was nothing S could say about this either. In the silence I remembered how H had knelt beside the baby radiating comfort and protection. I could not stop a seizure nor get to the bottom of why, but I could comfort the baby. I stroked her hair, kissed her fingers, covered her gooseflesh with the sleeping bag.

We found a parking spot on 6th street and entered through a balloon arch at the Miner Pavilion (“Funny it’s called the “minor” pavilion…”) only to be sent to another entrance. We went back through the balloon arch (“Sorry kid, the party’s not for us…”), down the block, through another entrance, up a ramp, then through a door to the Pediatric ER.

The triage nurse had me lay the baby on a scale. Skin to cold metal, the baby bawled. When her weight registered and I could pick her back up, her arms latched around my neck so tighter than a sick kid ever could.

The resident doctor was a young woman with long brown hair and the personable bearing and warmth of a nurse. The baby blocked the doctor’s every attempt to examine her; a reassuring return to form that we cheered on. The doctor asked me to remove the baby’s diaper, revealing a dense galaxy of tiny red dots.

“Looks like a virus,” said the doctor. “But I’ll order a test for respiratory infection in case she needs antibiotics.”

When the doctor left, I reminded S that he could go home. It was so kind of him to take us, but he had an early morning and long day ahead, and his own family at home. We would be fine. He said he might, once we…but then never did and eventually I gave in to the gratitude and stopped bringing it up.

The baby drifted off to sleep while S and I talked about the last time we were at the ER. The time I’d pulled a muscle doing deadlifts; the time he and his mother sat waiting for treatment while a football team of orderlies attempted to reset a screaming patient’s dislocated hip; the time his cousin had been roofied. We talked about our families and the ebbing flowing fortunes of our ancestors. How each had lived in reaction to their circumstances, bettering themselves one step forward and two steps back. We did not say: And us too, being only examples, flawed in hindsight, for our daughters to improve upon.

Around midnight, the results came back negative to respiratory infection. We were cleared to go. I stood at the nurse’s bay rocking the baby while S went to query a nurse about his ankle.

While I waited, a scruffy bear of a man approached us. He called the baby by name and spoke to me in an offhand way, as if picking up mid-conversation.

“We get this a lot, especially during cold season,” he said, “but three times in a two months is bad luck.”

He asked me to describe the seizure, which I was happy to do because the sight of it had been playing on repeat in my head for the past three hours. Voicing it felt necessary and productive, like learning a monologue or singing Hebrew letters while inking a Torah scroll. He listened, nodding approval.

“Bilateral seizures, where both sides of the body convulse, that’s really what we’re looking for. If it happens on one half of the body, or lasts longer than three minutes or it’s not tied to a fever, that’s an indication something else is going on. Febrile seizures like this are unfortunately really common especially at this age. I used to have ‘em. Went on til I was six.”

My eye rested on his badge, and the words “Attending Physician” below his name. This was the boss. A happy ending, then, for a kid who worried his parents sick.

S returned and lead the way out, hobbling back through the ER, down the ramp, out the entrance and back up 6th street to his car.

At home, I returned the baby to her crib. She was due a dose of tylenol in half an hour so I settled on the couch to kill time scrolling. Instead, I noticed the pattern pieces that S had piled across the dining table.

Taking up the ruler and pencil, and the bodice front, back and side pieces, I shortened each by 1.5”, cutting at lines parallel to the grain before taping them all back up.

I located the bust apex on the bodice front (a surprising omission from an otherwise fantastically thorough pattern by Charm Patterns). I made a mark 1 inch below the apex, cut a line to it and gently pried apart the severed edges, lowering the widest part of the bust.

I labelled all the pieces, added the markings and cut the notices, then rolled them up together, and tucked them back into the living room closet.

30 minutes later I was a different person. From spiralling on the doctor’s words, replayed arguments with my husband, flashbacks of the long moment it happened, and intermittent attempts to blot out this unpleasantness with mindless doomscrolling…to simple, honest exhaustion.

At 12:57, I loaded a pipette with tylenol. She took it without waking.

Leaving her door ajar so I could hear the sound of her breathing, I tiptoed into my bedroom, climbed into bed, and fell asleep.