Past: Killed the baby while napping again obstructive sleep apnea
He came home from the hospital with some pretty fancy accessories...that weird blue pacifier, a green and white afghan knitted by volunteers from the granny farm, and a useless piece of shit apnea monitor.
Apnea derives from the Greek word apnoie, meaning: "Oh my God the baby's dead, no...wait...just not breathing". The monitor we were issued didn't measure how much oxygen was floating around in his system. It didn't check to see if his heart was still beating merrily away. It just wanted to make sure that his tiny chest continued to heave mightily up and down.
I asked his pediatrician about also monitoring O2 saturation and heartrate, but she laughingly blew me off. You're just used to the NICU. Relax, you know your baby. Everything's fine if his color is good. Soooo....armed with nothing more than blue=bad & pink=good, she sent us out into the big wide world.
Turns out, it was not that simple. He snored like a half-strangled warthog. Truckers, hibernating bears, 500 pound aunties...he put them all to shame with that sonic weapon of a snore. It sounded like he was choking to death all night long because, well...he was.
When you go to sleep, your whole body relaxes, including your airway. His chest would make all the motions required to whoosh in great lungfuls of air but only a tiny fraction actually squeaked through. Sometimes not even that. He would rattle the hatches with his snort_cough_sputter routine and then...dead silent.
Quiet was my cue to frantically reposition him in an effort to get the air moving again. I'd push his head back in a textbook rescue breathing pose. I'd prop him this way and that using bolsters made from old hiking socks. I'd stroke his cheeks, tickle his feet, but a lot of the time I'd just have to wake him up.
When I brought this up to his pediatrician, she let me know that it was *ok*. Those babies snore and wake up a lot at first. New moms don't get a lot of sleep, you know, and it's hard for everyone at first. Don't worry, you'll adjust.
And I did. I became a super light sleeper. All night long, I'd doze, listening for the quiet pauses. All night long I'd startle awake to the horrifying silence of a Blue_Baby. I'd be terrified I was too late. I'd cut deals with God and bargin with the Devil as long as he was still alive enough for CPR. I felt so guilty and negligent for sleeping.
For two miserable years, we tried to get anyone with a medical degree to really listen to what we were going through. Subconsciously, I think there is an underlying belief that when you have a disabled child, life sucks and that's all there is to it. Snoring and a degree of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are standard for kids with achondroplastic dwarfism. But his OSA was so bad that it enlarged his heart, he failed to thrive, and ended up trached for a few years.
He still has OSA issues that come and go. I don't even know how to sleep without listening for his death. It is morbid and fucked and I'm so god damn tired.
This apparently goes under my pillow every mother fucking night.
Apnea derives from the Greek word apnoie, meaning: "Oh my God the baby's dead, no...wait...just not breathing". The monitor we were issued didn't measure how much oxygen was floating around in his system. It didn't check to see if his heart was still beating merrily away. It just wanted to make sure that his tiny chest continued to heave mightily up and down.
I asked his pediatrician about also monitoring O2 saturation and heartrate, but she laughingly blew me off. You're just used to the NICU. Relax, you know your baby. Everything's fine if his color is good. Soooo....armed with nothing more than blue=bad & pink=good, she sent us out into the big wide world.
Turns out, it was not that simple. He snored like a half-strangled warthog. Truckers, hibernating bears, 500 pound aunties...he put them all to shame with that sonic weapon of a snore. It sounded like he was choking to death all night long because, well...he was.
When you go to sleep, your whole body relaxes, including your airway. His chest would make all the motions required to whoosh in great lungfuls of air but only a tiny fraction actually squeaked through. Sometimes not even that. He would rattle the hatches with his snort_cough_sputter routine and then...dead silent.
Quiet was my cue to frantically reposition him in an effort to get the air moving again. I'd push his head back in a textbook rescue breathing pose. I'd prop him this way and that using bolsters made from old hiking socks. I'd stroke his cheeks, tickle his feet, but a lot of the time I'd just have to wake him up.
When I brought this up to his pediatrician, she let me know that it was *ok*. Those babies snore and wake up a lot at first. New moms don't get a lot of sleep, you know, and it's hard for everyone at first. Don't worry, you'll adjust.
And I did. I became a super light sleeper. All night long, I'd doze, listening for the quiet pauses. All night long I'd startle awake to the horrifying silence of a Blue_Baby. I'd be terrified I was too late. I'd cut deals with God and bargin with the Devil as long as he was still alive enough for CPR. I felt so guilty and negligent for sleeping.
For two miserable years, we tried to get anyone with a medical degree to really listen to what we were going through. Subconsciously, I think there is an underlying belief that when you have a disabled child, life sucks and that's all there is to it. Snoring and a degree of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are standard for kids with achondroplastic dwarfism. But his OSA was so bad that it enlarged his heart, he failed to thrive, and ended up trached for a few years.
He still has OSA issues that come and go. I don't even know how to sleep without listening for his death. It is morbid and fucked and I'm so god damn tired.
This apparently goes under my pillow every mother fucking night.
posted by T. Willie at 11:01 AM
1 Comments:
Good God. Can't they put one of those Apnea machines on him to help him out at all? That's totally fucked!
Nothing pisses me off more than when doctor's discount you.
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