u/Correct-Ad-2076

A couple of weeks ago, our 10-month-old son was hospitalized after having several seizures. The doctors diagnosed them as focal seizures originating from his right temporal lobe. During the seizures, he would stare blankly, become unresponsive, and his oxygen levels would drop.

He had a full workup in the hospital, including an EEG, MRI, and genetic testing. His MRI was normal, and his EEG showed focal seizures but otherwise normal background activity. We were discharged on Keppra, and so far he has been seizure-free for two weeks.

We are currently waiting for the genetic testing results, which should be discussed at our neurology follow-up in about a month.

Since coming home, my husband and I have been watching him constantly. It’s hard because some of these seizures can be subtle, and we are worried we might miss something. Today he had a prolonged staring spell where he did not respond when I called his name, but he seemed to snap out of it as soon as I touched him. I’m not sure whether that was a seizure or just normal baby behavior, but it sent my anxiety through the roof.

This whole experience has been incredibly scary. Our son seems happy and is actually making developmental progress, which is reassuring, but waiting for answers is so hard. I’ve made the mistake of reading too much online and have terrified myself with all the worst-case possibilities.

I would really appreciate hearing from anyone whose baby had a similar experience.

I know some people are on the fence about the owlet so I wanted to share our recent experience and why I would recommend it even in spite of false alarms.

We have had it for both of our children and had the occasional false alarm. But recently one night after putting our youngest down, the red alert went off. I assumed it was a false alarm because my baby kicks the sock off sometimes. I checked, he appeared okay and everything looked normal, so I reset it.

Then it went off again. And again.

At that point we noticed he looked out of it and decided to call 911. We ended up in the PICU for a couple of days trying to get to the bottom of what was happening, and it turned out our baby was having seizures in his sleep.

The hard part is they didn’t look like seizures at all. No shaking or obvious signs. He looked like he was just sleeping, but the seizures were actually causing apnea (pauses in breathing), which you can’t really see.

Looking back, these were likely the first seizures he had, and we would not have known without the alerts.

Not saying the Owlet is perfect, but in our case, it caught something we otherwise would have missed for weeks or months.

TL;DR: Repeated Owlet alerts led us to call 911. Our baby ended up in the PICU and was diagnosed with seizures during sleep causing apnea, not obvious seizure activity. It helped us catch something we would not have known otherwise and prevented further serious issues.