Cosleeping Saved Ivan's Life

[JDBracho]

It was early in the morning and I had just finished nursing Ivan, he was 4 months old at the time.  My usual ritual was to nurse him to sleep in our bed, and I would wait until he was in a deep sleep to move him to his crib.  Some nights I would fall asleep before I could move him.  That night, exhaustion had not taken over and I was watching my little boy sleep.   There is something so peaceful about watching your baby sleep.  Suddenly, he caughed, and I moved his head to see if he was ok.  Usually when you do this,  your baby will move,  Ivan did not.  My first thought was that he was already in a deep sleep, so I picked him up to move him, and he made no movement.  I  placed him on his back in the bed and stared at his chest, and it was not rising and falling.  At this point I started to panic.  I woke my husband up, as I started to check Ivan's mouth to see if he was choking.  Still no movement.  I quickly turned him upside down and did the choking pat for infants.  Still no movement.  At this point my husband took over and started breathing into our little ones mouth and nose.  He took two breaths into him, and then Ivan opened his eyes and gave mommy and daddy the biggeest smile.  As if he was wondering why mommy and daddy were looking at him in the middle of the night.  All I could do at this point was pick him up and hold him and cry.  We almost lost our sweet little boy, 

 My husband and I were totally shook up.  All I could think was, what if I had fallen asleep, and what if  I hadn't checked him after he caughed.  You don't always check your baby in the middle of the night every time he or she makes a noise.   The strangest thing to me was that he wasn't breathing, but he wasn't trying to breathe either.   Sometimes I wonder if Ivan would have been a SIDS case.  Ivan seemed fine and wanted to nurse to sleep again,  but neither I nor my husband got a wink of sleep after that, we were both watching that tiny chest rise and fall.  When the doctors office opened, just a few hours later we took him in.  The pediatrician immediately put in a order for some tests and placed him on a sleep apnea monitor.   The test results showed negative for acid reflux or any type of obstruction.  They ruled out obstructive sleep apnea.  The first week of using the Apnea monitor was worse than I had ever imagined.  It would go off nearly every hour, especially after Ivan would nurse.  The doctor eventually put in an order to increase  the time before the alarm would sound.  We would still get an alarm once or twice every time Ivan would sleep.  After he turned a year old, our pediatrition reccomended  to have an extensive sleep study performed on Ivan.  At this point it was very unusual that the sleep apnea did not go away.  The only conclusions from sleep study was: that they did not think that the apnea was life threatening and they recommended that I eliminate night feedings since most of the apnea occurrences were within 10-15 minutes of breastfeeding him to sleep.   Our pediatrition recommended a schedule for weening us off of the apnea monitor, and I told him that was silly and we stopped cold turkey.  It took me a couple of months to ween him from night feedings.   He slept in his crib in our room until he was about 18 months.   I was still very uneasy about having him far away from us.  He still has sleep apnea, and I can hear him when he starts breathing again over the baby monitor.  He will be 3 in November, and just this month was the first time he slept in a room without a baby monitor in the room.  I still wake up several times in the night and do the infamous is he breathing check. 

I plan to request more studies/tests when he is a little older, once he is more comfortable with going to the doctor.  I look back at the sleepless monitor alarm days and count my blessings that our little Ivan is still here.  I often wonder how many apnea cases are mistaken for SIDS, or if they are related.  I don't think I will ever have a restful night until this whole thing is resolved.  I feel like they just blew us off, since they never found a cause for the apnea. 

 

[ZTAmommy]

Oct. 1, 2008 at 12:00 AM

you are so blessed everything turned out ok