The Walters

I love/hate an electrical device…there I said it and this probably makes me a bad Mommy. I’ll give you some history.

Exactly a week after Henry was born, we went into his first check up (with the awesome Dr. Cordova) and like most newborns he slept through most of it.

Henry was measured.

Henry was weighed.

Henry did some calisthenics to show he had good hips.

Henry was sleepy, but breathing. Breathing very slowly. With long pauses between breaths.

Then the doctor was listening to his chest with a stethoscope and asked the nurse for some pneumo-device to clip to Henry’s finger to check his pulse as we counted breaths and before I knew it she said we were to go back to the hospital to the pediatric unit and then we were there and there were chest x-rays and there was blood work and people coming in and out taking vital signs and nurses putting hoses up his nose and down his esophagus to rule out acid reflux…and we were a disaster, but we were okay…kinda.

I had stayed an extra day at the hospital with Henry because there was concern about a potential infection (mine) and unfortunately Henry was the one who ended up with an infection…influenza.

Kansas was not in ‘flu season yet and here we were back in the same hospital where he had contracted it. It made me angry. A kind of red and raw, itchy, prickly, bumpy mess of anger. It made my skin crawl to hear the nurses and staff discuss how nobody they knew had the ‘flu.

Most people think of influenza and think 24-hour bug or stomach flu, not the disease capable of pandemic/epidemic proportions.

People would say, “Oh, you mean RSV.”

“No, like the bird ‘flu,” I would say and people would give me a horrified look.

Yeah, that kinda bad.

There is nothing you can give an infant with the ‘flu but pure oxygen.

No ‘flu shots until 6 months, no treatment. I take that back, there is a potential treatment, but it has such bad side effects (like brain damage) that it is not usually administered unless the symptoms get really really bad.

I had not slept much after labor, there had been so many people in my room the entire time and coming in and out at all hours. This is really not a complaint, but a fact.

(Nurses coming and going, delivering medication or forgetting and not delivering medication. People coming and bringing presents for the baby. My mom was the one person who brought me (just me!) a present. She said, “I know a lot of times people forget about the Mommy.” I had wanted to cry.) I know I am not alone with this feeling. Personally, I have problems with boundaries and other people. I have a hard time saying no. How do you say no to people who have traveled miles and hours to see you and your new baby? How many times can your husband tell people no for you?

My perspective changed rapidly. It is amazing, how and what will change in a few short hours. This was my child. Nobody was going to push me into anything. People were going to listen and I was going to be able to say no. This did not make me popular with the nursing staff. But they listened, and I did say no, and I demanded phone calls to doctors, equipment checks and that I be able to feed my baby breast milk as much as possible and I did NOT want to supplement with formula.

I stopped sleeping, we stopped sleeping. I did not leave the 10×12 hospital room for almost 5 days. (There was a shower.) Reid only left to go home and feed the dog. We took turns sleeping on the one twin-sized bed. Henry slept in a crib. A crib that looked like a jail cell. Reid called it Henry’s “tiger cage.”

Henry stopped breathing. More than once. For 20 seconds or longer. Once he stopped for 50 seconds. Reid and I would shake his crib and then him and then pick him up and jiggle him, and as soon as desperation would sent in, Henry would sigh and puff some air in and out.

My mom came everyday. She brought us food, magazines, books and snacks and the most encouragement anybody was capable of giving us. Some friends stopped by. Aunt Monkey left quickly to hide her tears. IT SUCKED. Other relatives we thought might come did not. And then our doctor said if and when we left, we were to be under quarantine…for a month…AFTER we went home. After 6 days we were allowed home with a monitor.

The monitor is to measure sleep apnea associated with the ‘flu. It is attached by a set of chest straps. You notice I use the present tense.  Four months later, we still have a monitor. We now are able to use it only at night when we are asleep and it does not go off as much as it did in the beginning. In the beginning, Henry had to wear it all of the time. We would walk around holding Henry and carrying his monitor. There were extension cords in more than a few rooms of our house. Reid took to calling him “the electric football.”

At first, the monitor went off all of the time. It has a shrieking beep that is supposed to wake up the baby and startle him into breathing. It doesn’t wake him up, but it does wake me up. The monitor beeps for several reasons, not just sleep apnea. Like when it has a full memory. Here is the monitor:

I love this thing, but I also hate it. I love it because it keeps Henry safer. I hate it because it is a reminder that I can’t do that by myself, or even by ourselves. I hate it because the monitor can be needy.

I quit my job because there was not a daycare in town that would take a baby on an apnea monitor, not that I blame them.

The monitor needs to be changed out and downloaded about once a month. Reports are sent from the monitor to the pediatrician’s office.  For some reason the reports are never there when we get to the pediatric office.

Dave, the guy who comes by the house (and owns the medical equipment company) is a really nice guy. I love that. I couldn’t deal with someone who did not have a caring attitude about this entire process. He comes by and resets the monitor’s parameters and replaces it when the memory gets full…I love that kind of service.

So this inanimate object is a member of the family, a part of our lives. Henry still has periods of “apneaic periodic breathing” that he is able to self-correct these short term episodes. Henry should, by all accounts, grow out of this immature lung condition. Our doctor has never seen or heard of a case in which this has not happened.

 As cliché as this may sound, I am happy to hear my son cry.

Teething…whatever. Teething, Henry could kick your ass.