The best way to answer your question is to have a video-
EEG montioring unit evalaution at an Epilepsy Center. This involves coming into hospital for a few days, having EEG and video recorfding day and night, to try and capture a fit. Analysing a fit can tell the doctors if these are epileptic seizures or some other form of nocturnal event. The regular EEG can commonly be normal even in the setting of epilepsy. Some types of seizures can characteristically occur during sleep, or around the time of your period. In the meantime, you may need to be on anti-epileptic medication to protect you until a diagnosis cna be made - ask your neurologist about this.
I have been going thru the nonsense of getting my spells sorted from heart to seizures. Then being diagnosed with E (epilepsy) and treated for 3 yrs., having to switch epileptologists, having another VEEG, getting taken off meds, having to have annual EEG's and last visit being told he was suspicious of me still having seizures but it being deep in my brain and not registering. This has all been going on mainly since '01, but really started a few yrs. earlier.
Now yesterday I got the diag of narcolepsy from a sleep spec (my neuro thinks I have it too) and wonder if it wasn't that all along. Unfort. it seems for many E is not that easy to diagnose. Here is a forum where you can talk to those diag with all diff. types of E and seizures and some that are in limbo awaiting a diagnosis. They are very friendly there.
http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=133
Your symptoms sound suspiciously like a form of sleep paralysis to me, which happens to be related to narcolepsy in some way too. Has anyone discussed this possibility with either of you?
A related discussion,
are these fits?? was started.
A related discussion,
fits in sleep was started.