On Dec. 9th, Charlotte woke up around 2 AM crying. We check on her and noticed that she had a high fever. We gave her medicine to bring down the fever and put her back to sleep.

By 10am she woke up, with a warm head but not as hot as when we found her at 2am. So, we decided to give her some breakfast before giving her some more medicine. While we were eating breakfast, Charlotte came over to Caroline and wanted Caroline to hold her.

While Charlotte is in Caroline’s arm, she start shaking and later on we found out it was a Febrile Seizure brought on by a rapid rise in temperature. Craig was holding Charlotte while Caroline phoned her sister Irene (she is a pediatrician and lives just 5 minutes away) for help. While Irene is on her way, Caroline was getting worried and called 911 also. After a couple of minutes Charlotte’s seizure stopped but her face turned blue and she appeared to be unconscious. It seemed like a long time, but most likely she was only unconscious for just a couple of seconds and then start crying. Shortly, the medics and Irene arrived. We put Charlotte in lukewarm water and gave her medicine to bring down her fever.

Around noon we brought Charlotte to Irene’s clinic for examination. We were glad to find that she had no infection or flu. By the time we left the clinic, Charlotte was slowly coming back around to be more like herself. We were given instructions to give her medicine to control her fever around to clock to prevent another seizure.

The rest of the day we kept her cool by giving her less clothes, patting her head with a wet towel and giving her a lot of fluid. Emotionally it was a restless day for us; there were a lot of worries and thoughts of losing Charlotte that went through our minds. We were a little jumpy every time Charlotte cried or looked uncomfortable.

With a lot of worry, we put her down to sleep. But we were awakened around 2:30am by her cry. We went into Charlotte’s room and found that she had a high fever again. We got really worried, especially when she started to shiver like she is having a chill. This was exactly what happened to Charlotte before she had her seizure. We called Irene for help. Irene told us to put Charlotte in the lukewarm water to cool off and give her medicine to bring down the fever. We were glad that Irene came over quickly, it was comforting to us to have her here.

We really appreciated all the prayers for Charlotte. She did much better in the following few days as her fever went down. We found out that she had Roseola. Roseola usually starts with a moderate to high fever, which caused her to suffer from a Febrile Seizure. Even though the seizure was a very traumatic experience for us as first-time parents, it was comforting to know that it’s common in the toddler years (4% of kids between 6mo - 5 yrs will at least have one) and most of the time is harmless. But this does mean that Charlotte is more prone to another Febrile Seizure next time she has an illness that cause high fever. Statistically, one-third of the kids that had the first one will have another one before they are 5 yrs old.

With this traumatic incident we have been reminded that Charlotte is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalms 139:14). She is a wonderful creation of God that we have enjoyed for the past 1½ years. In the moment when she went unconscious in our arms, we learned that no matter how much we love her, we are not in control of her life. But we are comforted to know that as precious as Charlotte is to us, she is much more precious in God’s heart. We’ve known her for a short time, but God is the one who “formed her inward parts and knit her together in the womb” (Psalms 139:13). We hope to enjoy Charlotte for a long long time, but we know we need to trust that God has a wonderful plan for Charlotte and we pray that we can “train her in the way she should go” (Proverbs 22:6).