She's not breathing...breath holding spells

Hi all

I wanted to write to you all about a once regular occurance in my household and one that once had me running for the phone to call 000. How many of you parents have a child that has breath holding spells? Probably not many thankfully, as only

Let me paint the this terrifying picture in your mind...

Your daughter aged 8mths is happily playing on the floor when grandma enters. Everyone knows your daughter hates to be touched by anyone else except mum or dad but as grandma says, "she needs to get used to it". (I know, another time, another story!) Anyway, in comes grandma and scoops up your daughter into her arms. Your daughter immediately begins screaming. Each scream lengthens until she holds that scream and cries all of the air in her lungs out. You take her back from grandma's arms but it's too late. Panic sets in but she can't catch another breath. Her face begins turning blue and her eyes are starting to roll back into her head. She is clawing at you in fear when suddenly she goes limp. You check to see if she is breathing but can't tell if she is as you are now panicing yourself. You scream for someone to ring for an ambulance when all of a sudden she takes a breath and slowly gains conciousness. She gets her colour back and looks around. Next thing, she is off and crawling back to where she was playing on the floor! You are left standing there, pulse racing thinking WHAT THE????

My doctor casually said my daughter suffered from a breath holding spell. "A what??" I said. She then went on to inform me that this type of thing will generally only affect about 5% of kids and is usually in the 1-2yrs age group. Most will have outgrown by the time they are 5. A breath holding spell will happen for a number of reasons. It can happen due to a tantrum. Your little princess couldn't get her own way so a tantrum followed leading to a b.h.spell. Another reason (which was the only reason in our case) could be fear. My daughter hated anyone getting too close to her unless the person was familiar. If they did, she would begin crying and then eventually end up having one of these attacks.

There is absolutely nothing you can do about b.h.spells. You have to simply let them run it's course. Once you have been lucky enough for your child to grace your presence with a b.h.spell, you will be able to see when one is coming your way. As it is a behavour problem in our young, the only way to deal with it and not reinforce it is to do the following...place your child in a safe place where no harm can come to them and ignore the behavour. It will pass quickly and your little one will come back around and realise she has no audience. She will no doubt do it a few more times for good measure but will then figure out for herself that it really is not worth the effort. I'm sure most of you are saying "yeah right oh, don't think so.." but after months of me panicing and researching it, I have to say it is true. No harm will come to your child by leaving them to it providing they are in a safe area.

Of course, if you are unfortunate enough to have a little delight who does this, then after the 1st attack, get advice from your G.P to rule out anything else such as seizures. Arm yourself with as much info as possible. After 4or 5 (ok,ok maybe 20-30) b.h.spells, you will be more confident and won't panic nearly as much!

To anyone out in Minti land who's child does this...I feel for you, it's an awful,scary thing to watch.

To those that don't...U are a bunch of lucky ducks!!!