Hypnogogic Jerk

Posted on 2015/01/25 15:37:49 (January 2015).

[Sunday 25th January 2015]
Although she was awake for a bit in the middle of the night , this morning Erika seemed a lot brighter than she had the previous morning, so fingers crossed this is just a run of the mill cold this time and will blow over in a couple of days.

For a while now, Erika has been doing this odd thing, particularly when sleepy, of sort of tensing up all her muscles, arching her back, and going quiet for a bit. She doesn't appear to be in any pain, and just relaxes when it's over, but it does seem to be getting a bit more frequent recently, so we thought we should probably see what the doctor has to say about it. As fortunately the surgery she's registered as has weekend walk-in clinics we popped along to that this morning just after 10, and were told we could see a doctor an hour-and-a-bit later. In the interim I took Erika to the playground, at her request, and did my best to keep her wrapped up as warm as possible (something which is a constant struggle as she really doesn't seem to like wearing hats and gloves).

We showed the doctor a video Chie had taken of Erika when she goes all tense, and whilst it'll require a bit a further investigation, his first guess was something called a "hypnogogic jerk", which is similar to that sensation you sometimes get that you've fallen over just before you fall asleep apparently - an odd side effect of the transition from being awake to being asleep. A lot of kids apparently go through phases of odd behaviour like this, and a lot of the time just grow out of it without requiring any treatment. Anyway we've been referred to see a specialist who will do a few more tests and fingers crossed it won't come to anything.

Chie had originally planned to take Erika along to a leaving lunch for one of her friends who also has kids, and is imminently moving back to Japan. Although Erika seemed relatively bright it didn't seem fair to inflict her cold on the other children, so instead Chie went along by herself, and I took after Erika for the afternoon.

Post a comment