In 2018, Michelle Montoya placed her infant daughter Wynter down to sleep in her crib, just like she had done every night since they came home from the hospital a few months earlier. However, instead of quietly going to sleep like usual, something unexpected happened.
Wynter’s infant arms and legs forcefully managed to break free of the tightly wrapped swaddle. Michelle recalls being surprised to see her daughter’s arms shoot out beyond her blanket so unnaturally. Immediately after breaking free, Wynter’s tiny arms began shaking wildly while her eyes darted towards the ceiling for a few tense seconds.
“I just thought, ‘This is odd,’ and remember telling her dad what occurred,” Michelle told us. “Then the next day, she kept doing it, so at that point I started looking up stuff on the internet. I discovered something called a Febrile seizure, which is caused by sudden fevers. I just assumed that’s what this was as she had her vaccine a few days earlier and did have a slight fever.”
However, the next day Wynter continued to have these strange seizure-like episodes, so her parents took her to a hospital where doctors struggled to figure out what was causing these unusual behaviors. After two weeks of no answers, her parents took Wynter to another hospital where they diagnosed her with infantile spasms, which is caused by a brain abnormality or injury that can occur before or after birth.
“At the time, they just said that this was a rare type of epilepsy that happens in kids, but that’s all they really said,” Michelle told us. “They tried to do tests to figure out what was happening and the cause, but everything came back clear.”
Wynter gets pushed along by her parents for a ride in her new Scoot donated by Holton’s Heroes.
Wynter’s parents turned over every stone trying to figure out the cause of her brain abnormality, but today, almost 3 years later, they still don’t have any more answers then when this first began.
Michelle admits that although she and her husband are so proud of development her daughter has made these past two years, Wynter is not where she should be. Typically, children that are the same age as Wynter are running around and exploring their environment with full use of their body, but for Wynter that’s unfortunately not the case.
“I wish that her motor skills could improve,” Michelle confided in us. “She’s barely starting to bear weight on her legs.”
So, with the hope of helping Wynter get more use of her limbs and expose her to new things, Holton’s Heroes was able to gift this tiny hero a great device called a Scoot, which allows Wynter to have much more freedom when out with her family.
“Usually, when we would take her on walks, it would just be in her stroller, which didn’t really allow Wynter to see the world around her,” Michelle told us. “But now when we take her in the Scoot, she gets to look at the cement, the sky and even tries to reach for flowers. Something else she loves is placing her hands on the big wheels to feel the movement on her hands as they go around in circles.”
Currently, Wynter is still experiencing seizures but her mom and dad are hopeful that the current meds are working, as the frequency of the seizures is going down. Now, their full attention is on physical and occupational therapy so that Wynter can develop more independence.
“I enjoy taking her on walks now, because before when we would take her in her stroller she just seemed uninterested,” Michelle admitted. “And now, seeing her smiling and trying to reach for the grass or flowers makes me happy.”
“I’m thankful to all the donors of Holton’s Heroes, because honestly, the Scoot is expensive and I don’t think that we could have afforded it. Your supporters are doing beautiful things making families like ours so happy.”
On Father’s Day in 2017, 2-year-old Josiah was running around his home, excitedly zooming from room-to-room , as he typically did. However, in a matter of seconds he managed to elope out of the back door undetected and make his way to the family pool. Read Josiah’s amazing tale of recovery now.