I am sad...

Tuesday was Elliott's original due date... September 16th. I guess I was hoping for a miracle, we were told that his apnea and need for a monitor would likely go away with maturity - meaning by the time he reached his 40 week gestational age. Yes, the doctor told us give or take a few weeks but since his monitor had not gone off since Sunday I thought we were home free... well, it just went off and every time it does, it breaks my heart. I don't understand how he can go days with breathing fine and then have an episode where he stops breathing.

There seems to be some confusion among friends and family with this monitor - so here is the deal.

Elliott is hooked up to an apnea monitor - 24/7 - the monitor records his heart rate and respiration's. If/when he goes longer than 16 seconds without taking a breath, an alarm sounds - one beep for every second he does not take a breath. Our role in this situation is to touch him to trigger a breath, tho some times he takes a breath before we can get to him - likely startled by the alarm. The monitor also goes off if/when his leads come loose. He wears two adhesive leads on either side of his chest - next to his nipples... this alarm goes off all the time - it is a constant beep to alert us to re-adhere the leads.

The monitor company will come out once a month (they have not been out yet) to download the information from the monitor. They will send the info to a pulminologist (sp) who will read and interpret the info and send a report and recommendation to our pediatrician who will in turn let us know what is going on. We have already been told that he will be on the monitor for a month after his last true episode. It is the pulminologist's job to determine the true episodes. Our hope is that these episodes are not true apnea but that is really wishful thinking.