The Corbett Family: ER visit

Little Miss Amelia had her first ER visit a few weeks ago....

We went to Costco one afternoon, just me and the kids. We got all of our grocery shopping done and ate lunch there.

On the way home, the kids were laughing and content in the back. No crying from either kid.

I pulled into our garage. Got out of the car and went to get the kids out of their car seats.

I opened the back seat door, and that's when I saw it. Amelia turning blue. She had her mouth open trying to breath, but couldn't. I got her out of her car seat as quickly as possible. She was still blue. I started screaming/crying for her to breathe. Scariest moment of my life. I ran to the passenger seat to grab my phone out of the diaper bag to call 911 when she took a breath and color came back to her face.

She looked a bit dazed, but was clearly breathing normally again so I didn't call 911 (looking back, I probably should have called any way just to be on the safe side). I called Logan immediately though. No answer. I called my mom next and bawled to her about what had happened. I think I scared her too. Sorry, mom. I decided right then to take her to the ER just to make sure she was okay (even though by then she was smiling and back to her normal self) and to find out what the heck happened.

Strapping Amelia back into her car seat and driving her to the hospital was probably just as scary as the incident. I was scared it was going to happen again. Luckily, the hospital was 5 minutes away from us. Hudson was also a big helper and kept telling me that she was okay the whole car ride.

Side note: We had only been in Charlotte for a month, so I didn't even have a pediatrician office to call before hand.

We got to the children's hospital around 4pm. I walked up to the counter with the two kids and explained what happened. They called us back into a room and the nurses got Amelia hooked up to monitor her breathing. We waited and waited. Two kids in the ER room by myself (with Amelia strapped to machines too) was hard, but the nurses kept coming in and out to give Hudson toys and snacks.

We saw the ER doctor (finally) around 6:30pm. Thankfully, Logan was on his way from work to meet us. The doctor listened to me tell what happened, and decided to do a bunch of tests to rule out anything that may have caused the episode. He ordered a chest x-ray and EKG right away. The ER doctor also told us they wanted Amelia to stay overnight for monitoring and a EEG test (testing for seizures) in the morning.

Amelia was acting fine at this point. She was smiling and laughing - being her normal self. I was really surprised they wanted her to stay overnight, but I didn't question it. The doctor wanted to be positive it wasn't anything serious.

So, I stayed the night with Amelia. I didn't get any good sleep with the machines beeping, and then at 2AM Amelia kicked something off her foot which made the machine do this sort of loud, panic noise. It woke me up in a panic. Luckily, the nurses came in right away so it didn't wake Amelia up. She slept soundly the whole night.

She had a EEG test in the morning to check for seizure activity, but that came back normal as did ALL of the other tests they did. The doctor ruled the episode a breath-holding spell. Read about it here. I think she must have gotten startled by something (probably something her brother did) and held her breath until she turned blue. Such a crazy, scary experience -- but we are so glad Amelia is healthy! I am crossing my fingers that we don't have any more ER trips in the future.

In the ER waiting to see the doctor..