My oldest son had asthma and we had multiple very scary moments when he couldn't breathe and we had to rush him to the hospital. A baby turning blue is a horrifically scary experience. I wish I had this technology back then!
Here is the post from my friend, Melissa Hayes:
I may sound a little like a commercial here, but I wanted to let people know a little more about what led to Adarah's hospital stay this weekend.
She'd had a bit of a cough for over a week, but sometime last week the sound of her cough changed and we got concerned. We called the pediatrician's office, but they had no appointments available to check her out until this week, and she seemed pretty okay at that point so we were going to wait.
On Friday night she popped a fever. In infants under 12 weeks of age, that requires a trip to the ER and initiates a battery of tests. They all came back negative except for one- RSV. A virus that is just a cold for older kids and adults, but can be very scary for kids age two and under, and most especially little ones who were born prematurely or have chronic lung issues like asthma. Adarah was a healthy full term baby though, so it was thought that she could probably recover well at home, but we were given a list of criteria to bring her back if she showed. Basically it was to look for dehydration or respiratory distress.
So in the wee hours of Saturday morning we brought her home. Josh was up most of the night with her, then I took over sometime in the morning to get him some rest. We decided to use our Owlet monitor all day instead of just when we were sleeping, and I'm still thanking God for the foresight there.
She was fussy all day, which is very unlike her. She didn't want to eat even though she was clearly hungry. It was frustrating, but she was always just under the line for when to bring her in. Finally after many hours of dealing with the screaming, she was exhausted enough to fall asleep. We put her down to sleep in the living room and took the opportunity to tend to other tasks. She was 10 feet away from us, but we were attending to everything else in the house/ other kids. We weren't just staring right at her, and I guess reasonably who would be.
At one point her Owlet monitor rang a red alert. I heard Josh's feet hit the floor upstairs and Vicki and I ran to Adarah. She was peacefully asleep, but her color was very pale and her lips were a bit blue.
We woke her up and her color got better, but we obviously took her back to the ER. At no point is blue an okay color for a baby! We explained what had happened and they rushed her back without any wait even though the waiting room was packed, and within 5 minutes a doctor (who was not a pediatrician) saw her and ordered supplemental oxygen. He advised us that he was seeing enough respiratory distress right there to admit, but a pediatrician had to make that call.
Now that she was pink and stable, it took a long time for the ped to come around, but she still saw significant respiratory distress even while on oxygen. (She was now having to work extra hard to pull air into her lungs). We were admitted for observation, and a few hours later when Adarah fell asleep, they cut off the oxygen to test and see if they could reproduce what we saw at home, and they were satisfied that her Oxygen levels were definitely dropping to dangerous levels when she was in a deep sleep cycle.
It all went downhill so fast, we put a sick but stable baby down for a nap, and only a few minutes later she was in big trouble. Without the Owlet monitor on her, she could very well have slipped quietly away in her sleep and none of us would have known until it was too late.
Seriously, best baby purchase EVER. I felt overprotective and silly buying this thing, but now I 100% recommend it to anyone! It's pricey, but it was my big splurge baby item and I'm so, so glad we got it! I'm not sure we would still have Adarah with us without it.
Link to website for this product is below.
No comments:
Post a Comment