It was about 5 o’clock and my husband was due home in about an hour. I had put Laura down for a nap around 2:30 and she was sleeping unusually long. When she woke up, I picked her up and immediately ran for the thermometer. Something was wrong. She went from having no fever before the nap to a fever of 104 in just two hours.
Suddenly, her body stiffened and begin to shake uncontrollably. I carefully put her down on our huge, over-sized, “squishy chair” and let her shake for what seemed to be forever. (In reality, it was likely that she seized for about a minute.) As scary as it was, I composed myself and begin making necessary phone calls: the doctor, a friend to watch my other children, my husband who would be wondering where we were when he got home. . .
What is It?
A febrile seizure is a seizure that is brought on by a fever, hence the name. It is different than epilepsy in that it is not necessarily recurrent, and it is always preceded by a fever. Generally, a child has a rectal temperature of more than 102 degrees and often the seizure is brought on by a sudden spike, (although not always).
Most commonly, the baby’s body will grow limp and unconscious and the baby will shake on both sides uncontrollably. Although it happens, it is more rare for the baby to grow stiff and shake. A febrile seizure can last for one to two minutes or be as short as a few seconds.
According to research, approximately 1 in every 25 children will have a febrile seizure at least once. Approximately one third of these children will have them repeatedly during infancy and toddlerhood, until the tendency to have them is outgrown.
How do you know if your child is prone to having them?
The short answer is: you don’t. You will not know that your child is prone to febrile seizures until he has one. I should note too, that just because your child has had one, doesn’t mean that he‘ll ever have one again. However, there do seem to be a few factors that are consistently associated with children who have recurrent febrile seizures:
Age: if your child is less than 15 months when he had his first seizure
Frequent Fevers: if your child gets a fever easily for every bug
Genetics: if there are any immediate family members that got febrile seizures as a child
Temperature: if a seizure begun when the fever was relatively low
Keep reading to find out what to do if your child has a febrile seizure.