What Is Shorthand for a Convulsion?

Police say Sam's pants have a blood stain on them, but it's not the amount of blood that someone would have expected from a violent killing if he had been the one who killed his wife. There is a 3.5 inch tear on his right rear pocket on his pants. That could have been during the fight with the killer. It could have happened when he killed her. We don't know. So let me then jump into what he says happened. He woke up early that morning to the sounds of Maryland's cries. He thought she was having a compulsion that she had experienced earlier in her pregnancy.