Busy Philipps Discovers Daughter Birdie's Seizure on FaceTime: A Terrifying Encounter

Busy Philipps. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Busy Philipps remembered the terrifying moment when she saw her oldest daughter, Birdie, have a seizure over FaceTime. Philipps, 44, talked about her child's frightening health scare on the December 13 episode of her "Busy Philipps is Doing Her Best" podcast. She mentioned that she received a FaceTime call from her 15-year-old daughter, who is currently at a boarding school in Sweden, earlier this month.

The actress said she was muttering to herself when she heard Marc Silverstein screaming for her, and she initially thought he was bothering her again. But upon hearing his voice, she sensed that something was seriously wrong. He told her that Birdie had suffered another seizure and that paramedics were on the phone. Philipps, who has a 10-year-old daughter named Cricket with Silverstein, joined her ex in front of the camera to see the paramedics tending to Birdie.

“She had just experienced a seizure and was still in the post-aura state. They were connecting her to medical equipment,” Philipps recalled. “[Birdie’s] friend who was with her, held the phone, capturing a kind of medium shot that showed everything that was happening. It felt incredibly strange.”

Courtesy of Busy Philipps/Instagram

The Girls5Eva actress mentioned that Birdie, who recently began using she/her pronouns again, was waving at the camera and calling out for "Mama."

"It was really difficult to see it on a screen, being in a different country across an ocean," she said, recalling that Birdie had experienced a seizure while Philipps was working on the film adaptation of the Mean Girls musical.

Birdie’s friend Sarah had seen the teenager struggling and getting sick while at a movie in Stockholm, which was hours away from their school. Someone in the theater called for paramedics right away, and they came quickly to help. While Sarah tried to contact their school and the adult in charge at their dorm, Philipps focused on making travel plans to get back home as soon as possible.

“I was searching online for private planes. I was thinking, ‘How much does it cost? $100,000? Can I put that on a credit card? How does that even work?’" she said. “I was like,

‘How do I not know anyone with a f—king private plane? I got to hang out with fancier people. Would Taylor Swift fly me to Sweden right now? Who knows Taylor Swift?’”

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Philipps eventually made it to Birdie’s bedside after she was taken to a local hospital, sharing Instagram photos from the ordeal on Wednesday.

“Birdie is fine. I am fine. We are all going to be OK,” Philipps captioned her post in part. “But it’s been a time. And a year.”