Today was tough. This whole week has been. E's monitor has gone off several times, three times for apnea. The first was a week ago, and it took several seconds to fully rouse her. The next two happened in the car on a twenty minute ride home. I pulled off of the freeway both times in a panic and had to shake my baby back into breathing. This morning was different.
Her monitor has very clear settings, so in the event it goes off (which can be likened to nothing short of a smoke detector/foghorn) you know to immediately grab the baby or check the settings of the machine, and there are blinking green lights for her respirations and her heartbeat. I spend most of my nights watching those green lights.
There are a series of 3 yellow lights, which indicate issues w/the monitor and the sensors. So if baby duck pulls her monitor wire off with her toes I'll know immediately upon looking at the monitor if it's her or if it's the machine. Yellow lights are reassuring. Red lights are altogether different. One light indicates apnea- no breath taken in 15 seconds. The second two indicate either a too fast heart rate or too slow of a heart rate, but only if she falls in a dangerous range.
I woke up at 7am with a red light saying her heart was slow. OH MY FREAKING GOD. I just buried her identical twin sister. I can't breathe for missing L so much and I can't live not having her and facing this little girl who is going to grow up missing so much and I can't explain anything to her except that I slept through it and let her sister die. And there are no guarantees that baby duck going to make it, she's at such a high risk because we lost L this way.
I know I'm lucky to have baby duck. In the first few days after L died I was so engorged and had so much milk and no L to drink her share. It was miserable. I still have baby duck, and by now my supply has almost completely adjusted. What do moms do with all that milk and no baby? I nursed baby duck during her sister's funeral and cried thinking about those moms who sit there staring at the casket of their baby engorged and bound to dry up their milk. I let down every time I looked at L- I just wanted to scoop her up and nurse her and make her better.
I'm so scared I'm going to lose E. If we hadn't had the monitor we would have lost her that first night the apnea monitor went off. She was fading and unresponsive and definitely not breathing. B got desperate and picked her up sandwich style between his two hands and flipped her back and forth a few times to make her mad enough to scream, and that did it. And there's nothing we can do except hope she makes it. The medical community's opinion is that SIDS is unstoppable. It's untreatable and unpredictable and if a baby is going to die she will die, nothing can really prevent it.
Sids is a motherfucker. link | posted by Ani at 10:33 PM
4 Comments:
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HeyItsBeej commented:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
- » 8:56 PM
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Lunasea commented:
Oh, hon, I'm so sorry. It must be terrifying, and so helpless, to feel like E could be ripped from you like Lily was. It's so unfair. I'm sending you many hugs across the miles.
- » 11:04 PM
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HeyItsBeej commented:
Crud, I deleted my comment. :::self whack:::
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Ani, I wish for so many things. I wish to turn back time, to take away your pain, to alleviate your fears....so much. And I know that mere words can't make you feel any better.
You didn't let L die. I know that doesn't help you for me to say it, but I've gotta say it anyway. You did not just let it happen. Why did it happen? I don't know. But it wasn't because of anything you did, or didn't do. You've heard that over and over again, and I pray that eventually, you'll come to believe it.
You are a SPECTACULAR parent. And you're fighting like mad for E. I'm praying harder than I've ever prayed - for E...and for you, and B and T and "Older E". And so are a ton of other people. We love you. Remember that. We really love you.- » 9:25 AM
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-h. commented:
Oh sweetie. I so wish there were more that I could do for you, to make this all better. You are a great, wonderful, and strong woman. Just remember that the whole brigade is here to love and support you, always.
- » 6:21 PM