It happened. Your baby was upset, cried and then suddenly, nothing – no breathing and no noise – just your child holding their breath.
The phenomenon, called breath-holding spells, had social media users reeling Saturday when some people saw for the first time what a more extreme breath-holding spell looks like.
The video has 19.2 million views as of Wednesday and shows a child who appears to be crying silently and holding his breath.
“Breathe, buddy,” an individual says, holding him and blowing air into his face.
According to the people in the video, the child had been holding his breath for about 21 seconds. He held his breath for a bit longer and then finally exhaled and cried.
The child’s lips are visibly blue towards the end of the video.
Breath-holding spells are typically triggered by something such as pain or something upsetting, causing the child to cry, said Dr. Jonathan Miller, the chief of primary care at Nemours Children’s Health in Delaware.
“A typical story is something happens that makes the child cry … kind of hard and then all of a sudden, you see them hold their breath,” Miller said. “Quicker than you would expect, they might sort of look like they’re passing out, they lose tone, they become limp.”
Sometimes breath-holding spells will come after a child gets a mild head injury such as banging their head on something, he said.
“Within 10 or 20 seconds of that, they have a breath-holding spell where they sort of go limp,” he said….
