Well, who would have thought?

It all started when Ryan got both top and bottom teeth.

We suddenly noticed spots of blood in his crib in the morning, and his tongue was looking a little mangled. I wasn't too concerned. I figured that he wasn't used to having teeth and occasionally bit his tongue at night. We felt bad for the little guy, but figured that he would eventually outgrow it when he got used to his new set of chompers.

Fast forward a few months.

It was still happening. Only now, he was also waking up multiple times during the night and we weren't getting much sleep. I noticed bigger spots of blood, and it seemed to be happening more often. Concerned, I decided I needed to know more about this and started to do more research. So, I made mistake #1: I Googled "Biting Tongue while sleeping."

I should have known better than to try to make a diagnosis through the internet. Only bad things can come from it. First you think it's just a paper cut and next thing you are positive you will need a limb amputated.

I truly thought that I would find hundreds of sites where people said, "Yeah, my kid did this for awhile while teething and it sucked but then he stopped. It's perfectly normal." Instead, I found very few sites mentioning it, and the only ones that had info suggested seizures. Panicked, I immediately tried sleeping on the floor in his room to monitor him. At 4 months pregnant, that lasted a whole 12 minutes.

The next day I called the doctor, and they had no idea what to do other than sleep in the same room with him or get a video monitor to watch for seizure activity. Six hours later, I became the proud owner of a $250 video monitor system that can later double as security around the perimeter of my mansion (that I don't yet own, but it never hurts to plan ahead.)

Nothing happened for a few nights, and then one Friday morning I woke up to a scene from a horror movie. The crib was covered in blood spots. Thirty, forty spots easily. My poor baby had a bleeding tongue all night. The doctor was called again, and this time a sleep study was recommended. We weren't sure that was what we wanted to do right away, as my gut was saying this was not seizures. Both the doctor and I wanted to know if he was restless at night because he was biting his tongue, or if he was biting his tongue because he was restless. I had read that iron deficiency can cause restless sleep. So I tried to increase his iron by giving him some formula in place of milk. After about a week, nothing had really changed - some nights he was perfectly fine, and some nights (or naps) he'd wake up with blood in bed.

This whole time, I was trying to do research, but finding nothing helpful. Until two nights ago, when my mom called and told me she had found an interesting article.

You see, Ryan and I both have a condition called hereditary geniospasm. A shaking chin. Completely benign. Our chins shake when we are stressed, nervous, upset, excited, or for no reason at all. Despite being teased as a child, I am used to it, most people rarely notice it anymore, and it's no big deal. There isn't much information about it because they've only found it in about 20-30 families in the entire world. Seriously. Weird, rare little chins we have. I noticed Ryan had it while we were still in the delivery room. No big deal. Except, in the article my mom found and in my follow up research, I found that PEOPLE WITH HEREDITARY GENIOSPASM OFTEN BITE THEIR TONGUES AT NIGHT! WHAT??! I had briefly thought there may be a connection, but since I don't ever wake up with a bloody pillow, I figured there couldn't possibly be a correlation.

So here is where it gets even stranger...

In a conversation with my husband, I mentioned that I hadn't been concerned when this first started because everyone bites their tongue at night on occasion. He looked at me like I had horns on my head.

"Yes," I explained. "You know, how once in awhile you are drifting to sleep and right before you fall asleep, you chomp down on your tongue and it wakes you?"

He stared at me. He had never done this. Two phone calls to family members, a Facebook poll, and questioning people at work, and I came to the realization for the first time in 30+ years that it is not normal to bite your tongue in your sleep. I never knew this. I thought it was common. It never came up in conversation, so how the heck would I know?

And now it all makes sense. We both have shaking chins and we both bite our tongues while sleeping (though I think I only bite it once every 8-12 months or so). As a baby, I never bit my tongue the same way, but I also took a pacifier. Ryan instead uses his tongue as an imaginary pacifier, which probably makes the whole situation worse.

I never in a million years would have guessed that biting my tongue was related to my quivering chin.

We are still going to take him to a sleep doctor, just to rule other things out, but I truly think this is the answer to the mystery. Honestly, who would have thought?