Our son was born 1-22-08 after full term normal pregnancy to my 38 year old wife. Natural child birth after 2-4 hour labor, no epideural. He was 7lbs 10oz 19 1/2 inches.
We began noticing rapid jerking/twitching a week to 2 weeks after coming home. Jerking was entirely confined to legs, feet, hands, and arms and occurred with all variations of the same e.g single foot, single leg, both legs etc.. Jerks have not been noticed in face, shoulders, or trunk.
Jerks are only noticed during early sleep, not awake and usually while we are holding him after a bottle feed. Somedays there would be 50 or so in a minute (all twitches were very electric in nature and were instantly on-off /fractions of a second long). and other days hardly any were seen.
I took short videos of jerking and went to pediatrician who obtained an EEG appointment with neurlogist. Test went well and he even slept for the test-but of course did not twitch or jerk. The EEG report was of a discharge in the occipital lobe but so far has not been correlated with the twitching.
We elected to observe for 2 weeks until a follow up appointment and were relieved to notice that almost all of the twitching has ceased-still very occasionally will show up. Neurologist scheduled a 2 month follow up with no meds and simply advised us to call if anything changed for the worse. He is head of neurology in Orlando hospital, and let us know that our son seemed very OK and that there would not be any diagnosis until an EEG or other test correlated definately with a behaviour, or unless our observations included obvious signs of seizure/epilepsy.
Now my question: Yesterday (2-25-08) I was watching my son as he awoke from an afternoon nap (he was napping on a slightly inclined changing pad) that he seemed happy and engaged (he smiled and made noises), then while he was smiling his eyelids closed a bit and his head drifted to the right while his eyes slid to the left. I thought he was just tracking me and smiling but I noticed that he did not seem to be tracking as I moved my face back and forth over him. I then picked up one of his arms and let it fall and noticed no tone or reaction as it fell. I did this several times with the same result and then began calling his name and snapping my fingers - no effect. When I stopped he then sort of self-startled and his eyes opened and focused and he began typical baby movements. This episode lasted about 15-30 seconds.
I know I've been spooked by the EEG and the twitching but I'm beginning to wonder if the above is indicative of any type of seizure? He's not able to hold his head up or sit yet so it's difficult to determine if he's just sleepy, or if something else is going on. He does all other baby behaviours fine and even seems a bit advanced in the motor skills area (he is able to go from back to side, and to hold his head up for long periods while on his tummy).
Does the above suggest anything? His behaviours seem to fall outside the usual both in type and for his age than anything else I've been able to find on-line.
Thanks for any reply.