Herbs for Noah CEO Hopes to Open Eyes to Rare Infant Syndrome With Sleep Aid

Houston, TX, January 5, 2015 (Newswire.com) - When Jenny Ribbans noticed that her baby son Noah was exhibiting some, seemingly benign, hiccup like movements, often mistaken for reflux, when he was less than six months old, she asked her pediatrician if she should be concerned.

Her pediatrician, like many others in the field, had not seen many cases of West Syndrome, and didn’t immediately recognize that young Noah was just one of one-in-twenty-five-hundred-to-three-thousand children in the United States who suffer from West Syndrome, a form of Infantile Spasms (IS). West Syndrome sufferers often experience more than 100 seizures per day, which can have a devastating effect on a young child’s development, and can go on to have other kinds of seizures in later childhood including an epilepsy syndrome called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. Most children also have learning difficulties which may be mild or severe.

Early recognition of the condition can have a beneficial effect on treatment and outcomes. When Jenny Ribbans finally received the diagnosis for her son that meant she could begin a course of, difficult, and often distressing treatments, she was determined to help other parents going through the process.

The multiple weekly appointments, and the course of medications left Noah, and his Mom, often exhausted, but they both struggled to find sleep. Jenny, a certified herbalist, created a water-based spray infused with flower and herb essences and sprayed it on Noah’s crib and blankets. The result was quite remarkable and soon Jenny was sharing her story with other care-givers on a Facebook page dedicated to supporting parent of IS suffering infants. Her stories of how Noah would be able to relax and transition into a deeper more restful sleep, inspired other parents who asked her to make some of the spray mist for them.

She started off making individual bottles but was soon making Dandelion Dreams, the name she chose for the spray, in batches of 100. She received orders from all over the country and started charging a small fee and donating a portion of all profits from her sales to causes that promote awareness, particularly amongst the pediatric care sector.

Twelve months since Noah first started showing signs of IS, Herbs for Noah, a new small business, owned by Jenny and her mother-in-law Kim Ribbans, has started selling Dandelion Dreams, the spray mist sleep aid, online. They are also hoping to find a major local retailer to stock the product.

“When the other parents started asking for repeat orders of Dandelion Dreams, I was so happy that something I had done for Noah and me to help us sleep, was also helping other people.” Says 30 year-old Sugar Land mother Jenny Ribbans. “We have even had interest from, and shipped the spray to Europe.”

And baby Noah? After being on several different medication regimes, Noah is one of the rare, fortunate, children to have achieved seizure control and, although the illness has delayed his development a little, he is very quickly catching up to other children in his age group.

Herbs for Noah sell Dandelion Dreams through its web site, herbsfornoah.com, and on other online marketplaces, including Amazon and eBay. She is also hoping to donate and work with the new UTHealth Center of Excellence for West Syndrome Research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), to promote one of their goals in improving physician awareness.

According to Gretchen Von Allmen, M.D., co-director of the Center and assistant professor of pediatric neurology at the UTHealth Medical School, “The sooner the diagnostic workup is done, the sooner treatment is started and the sooner we can stop the developmental decline.”

For Noah and his Mom Jenny Ribbans, she is happy that she was persistent and received the diagnosis Noah needed, but which many other children have to wait, an often devastating, time for. She’s also glad that she has helped at least few other people sleep a little easier.