.:EEG:.

This past Monday, Reece had to go up to Primary Children's Hospital to have an EEG. For 4-5 months now, she has been doing this thing where she tenses her legs up and grabs at her diaper, or clings on really tightly to whatever she is holding at the time. It started out as just something she does when in her car seat or stroller, so I first thought it was something related to having straps between her legs. But it has gotten progressively worse and more frequent - you can almost guarantee that she is going to do it when getting her diaper changed, it's gotten to the point that she will be crawling around playing and will just drop to the floor, sometimes on her face, and tense up. While she's doing it, she is not usually very responsive at all.

I was just going to wait to talk to her doctor about it when I take her in for her one year checkup next week, but there were a few bad days in a row about a week ago, and I just decided to take her in because I hate watching her do it. Her doctor was seriously puzzled by it. Josh and I think that it might be urinary refux. Our friend's daughter has it, and Reece does the exact same thing that she used to do. But her doctor doesn't seem to think that is it. He wanted to try two different things before we re-evaluate. One is a cream for her little goodies. The other was to take her in for an EEG to make sure she is not having seizures. He was concerned about that because Josh has a history of having very mild seizures (so mild he doesn't even know he's having them) and because she sometimes zones out when she is tensing. He doesn't believe that either of these are the problem, but wants to rule them out. We don't really believe she is having seizures either, and I haven't noticed a difference since starting the cream. She has never cried when she does it, but she is very obviously uncomfortable while she does it. Sometimes she even grunts a little bit.

I'm sure lots of people think we are being hypochondriacs, but I can't really worry about that. I am home with Reece all day long, and I'm the one that has to sit and watch her do it and it's so sad. Why not rule things out and at least give us some peace of mind along the way? At times people have thought it was cute or funny, but I've never really seen it that way. She is so uncomfortable, and I don't really believe she is doing it on purpose for whatever reason. Her doctor is especially confused because she is such a happy, sweet girl who is developing right on track and meeting her milestones. That is at least good news! Right now, he is kind of leaning towards it being some sort of learned behavior that she does for whatever reason. In some ways I can kind of see that, but as I said above, it's so uncomfortable for her that I don't know why she would do that to herself. But who knows?

So Josh and I took her up on Monday to get the EEG. They applied 23 probes to her little head. She was SO GOOD while they were doing it, and just laid still for them. The techs were even so impressed with how well she did. They wanted it to be sleep deprived, so she hadn't had a nap that morning. They got her hooked up, wrapped her head in gauze so that she couldn't pull the probes off, then left Josh and I in a dark room with her to get her to sleep. I just held her and rocked her to sleep. She fought me for a minute - she doesn't like to be held to go to sleep anymore - but she was out within minutes. I have to admit, I kind of enjoyed the snuggle time. They monitored her for about 20 minutes, and then came in and did a strobe light test to see how she reacted to that. She didn't appreciate that at all, and that was about the only time she cried! And after that we were done! Took the probes off to reveal some sweet hair underneath, wiped off the gel, and headed home for a real nap.

She was such a good girl, and I was so proud of her. I'm sure she was a little scared, but she didn't act out at all. We haven't heard the results yet, but we're not really expecting to get any bad news from this. Just ruling it out!

Even with her mummy head, she still looked pretty dang cute!

Getting all wrapped up!
The view from the back
Getting ready to snooze with Mommy
Getting un hooked after
Sweet hair
The side view