Anyone Have Children with Breath Holding Spells

Hi M.,
I have twin boys and one of them have breath holding spells. Ever since he was a baby, he will hold his breath and then cry very hard. When he was 12 months old, he had his first real episode, he was crying and then stop, when i looked at him he was cyanotic and not breathing, needless is to say it scared me a lot. We took him to the ER and the did a bunch of test and couln't find anything wrong with him. His pediatritian studied his chart and said that he had a BHS. What you read is correct. He has not had a full blown spell ever since, when he starts to get cyanotic i try to distract him. The Dr. said to not worry about it and that he will outgrow it (easy said than done, i know). Right now he is 26 months old and is a happy big boy just like his twin brother. I hope this helps.

My son holds his breath (he's 18 months old now) when he's mad or upset. Sometimes he does it so long he passes out - it's like he's super made one second... then he holds his breath... and then he "resets". He is suddenly calm and looking at me. It's weird. But I don't worry about it anymore. It freaked the nurse at the Drs office out yesterday (he did it after his flu shot) until I told her he does it all the time (which is why I didn't really react).

I don't know what to tell you about him just doing it randomly, but if they don't think there's anything wrong with him, there probably isn't. Just keep an eye on him and if it seems like the spells are more frequent you can take him back in.

I did that when I was a kid. Maybe it's just him. I doubt there's anything wrong with him. IF they couldn't find anything, it's probably nothing to worry about. he'll probably grow out of it.

My daughter has breath holding spells. The first occured when she was 8 or 9 mos. old, so I'm not sure if it might look any different with a younger baby, but I can tell you that they certainly have always occured subsequent to an "event". I would not characterize these as "tragic," it could be something as small as abruptly taking something away from her that she really wants, but her breath holding spells are always preceeded by either a physical or emotional "event" (i.e. falling down, bumping her head on something or someone, or a frustration like taking a toy away or not getting her way about something). I believe that these spells are much more likely to occur when she is fighting a cold or especially overtired, because they don't occur every time she falls down or has something taken away. I've never seen her have a spell without something preceeding it, however, what you've described is exactly what it looks like once the breath holding begins. The color drains from her face resulting in a bluish color, she will become rigid (which can look scarily like a seizure) and she stops breathing for a minute or two. When she comes to, she has this glazed-over, sleepy look in her eyes and is sometimes rather drowsy. Sometimes she cries immediately afterwards, and by five minutes or so later she is typically back to whatever she was doing. I hope that helps!

Sam