Christmas in El Paso

It was so great to spend Christmas in El Paso with my family. Kender had so much fun getting to know Mommy's side of the family. He especially enjoyed his Gama, who bribed him with Cheetos and let him get away with everything because he's so darn cute :)

Something really scary did happen to us on this trip. About midnight on the 30th, Ryan and I awoke to the sound of Kender having a febrile seizure. He was very hot, convulsing, and his eyes were rolled back in his head. Ryan and I immediately went into a panic, and woke up my parents for help and did our best to bring his fever down and stop the seizure. Ryan quickly gave him a blessing, and the seizure stopped a few seconds later. The whole thing only lasted about four minutes, but it felt so much longer.

After the seizure stopped, Kender's body was completely exhausted. We know now that everything that happened was normal and harmless, but at the time we had no idea what was going on. We honestly thought we might lose our baby. We couldn't wake him up, and he was completely limp. He was breathing and moaning quietly, but we couldn't get him to respond to us. My parents drove us to the ER so he could see a doctor.

When we got there, the nurse took his temperature, which was 103.7. By this point he had woken up a little and we were able to give him some Tylenol and a few drops of apple juice. They ran some tests for the flu and something else, but they came back negative. From a chest X-ray, we learned that Kender has a viral upper respiratory infection. This caused him to run a high fever in the middle of the night, and that fever brought on the seizure. Most of our time in the ER was spent waiting, and while we were waiting the Tylenol kicked in and Kender slowly returned to his old self, although he was still exhausted. The next day Kender was back to normal. Running, laughing, and playing like normal. He didn't even know he was sick!

We learned a lot from this experience, and we hope that we will be a little more prepared if it ever happens again. Apparently it's fairly normal for young children to have febrile seizures, and they usually don't cause any damage. We learned that they are genetic, so there is a 30% chance that our future kids will have them too. They are also more prominent in boys. We also learned that to prevent them, all you have to do is keep them on Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen to control the fever, We had given Kender some Ibuprofen before he went to sleep, but as soon as it wore off his fever spiked while he was sleeping. Now we know that when he has a fever, we have to wake him up in the night to give him another dose before his previous one wears off.

This was the most terrifying thing that our little family has ever been through, but it made us so much more grateful for our sweet boy, and for all of our family members. Ryan and I were so grateful to have each other and the support of our whole family through this. We know that Heavenly Father protected our son and guided us all through the storm.

In the hospital, smiling through the tears. Kender was still pretty out of it, but he was slowly regaining his strength.

Snuggling after the worst night of our lives. So very glad to be home.

Back to normal by bedtime, and reading a story :)

Aside from that one horrible night, we had a really great vacation! Here are some happy pictures - And I have to thank Ryan, Glenn, and Cristina for taking these. I think I only took about 5 pictures the whole time we were there!

PS - Mom and Heather, you should email me any that you took please! Or just post them on Path or Facebook so I can download them :)