Tuesday, September 4, 2012

He Holds Us



I watched Levi's first birthday video the other day.  I must admit, I never do this.  I'm pretty sure I've never watched Toby's first birthday video, or his second, or his third.  But, three days ago, I found myself perusing through pictures on our computer when I ran into Levi's first birthday folder.  His face was so little, in comparison to now.  I wanted to see all of the pictures and remember what he used to look like pre-steroids.  Granted, it was eight months ago.  But, I was drawn to them all the same when I came across several little video files of presents and cake.  It was his first birthday, so of course we put the entire cake on his high chair tray and let him dig in.  Now, usually, I skip past the videos.  Not always.  Usually, though.  They just take so much more time - something a mom with two small boys doesn't have in surplus.

This time, though, I played the video.  I watched my beautiful boy as he daintily pinched at the frosting on the cake and stayed perfectly clean for the first five minutes.  He had an amazing pincer grasp if you ask me.  :)  I watched as he slowly began to dig in with his entire hand as he realized there was something under that frosting!  I watched him say "Bye Bye" to somebody as they left the room.  He waved his cake-filled hand enthusiastically, spraying cake and frosting all over the place.  Wait, he said "Bye Bye" and waved.  I realized that must have been something he had lost from the seizures because at eighteen months he wasn't doing that anymore. I had forgotten that he had been able to do it at all.  I watched him do a few more things that I wondered if he had lost from the seizures.

 But, then I watched him have a seizure.  Right there in his high chair!  On his birthday!  Six months before we ever saw them!  I replayed that segment of the video countless times wanting to be sure of what I was seeing.  After showing it to my husband and watching it about a gazillion times, my conclusion has stayed the same.  He had a seizure.  And who knows how long he'd been having them up until that point.  We thought that he had started having them somewhere between seventeen and eighteen months.  They're a subtle kind of seizure so we knew we'd probably missed a few episodes, but I never could have imagined that we'd been missing them for six months.

The crazy thing is that usually when babies have been having infantile spasms (the kind of seizure Levi has had) for as long as six months, they are cognitively gone.  I read one blog where a baby had them for just two months and lost all of his words, was not able to walk and four months in couldn't even sit up on his own anymore.  At ten years old, he was considered to have autism and was very behind developmentally.  I think about the few things that we were concerned about with Levi's development, but it was just a few and he's catching up so quickly.  He's almost on track for his age now.  But, he was having these spasms for at least six months!!

I never cease to be amazed at the goodness of God.  He holds us in His big, strong, amazing hands and never lets go.  Thank you Jesus for protecting my baby boy.