After we were home from the hospital, Jordan continued to seem fine. On Friday afternoon, I was sitting on the couch in our living room chatting with my friend Kim while nursing Jordan. I looked down at her and realized that she looked blue. Now I know that a newborn has a purple look to them so I was trying to determine if it was a normal color. I realized that something wasn't right. I pulled her off of me and said to Kim "She's blue! Does she look blue to you?" Kim said she wasn't sure, maybe a little bit. I asked her to go get Derrick. I stimulated Jordan by moving her arms and legs around. I looked under her t-shirt to see the color of her body - it was definitely somewhat blue. But she seemed to be breathing now. What had just happened?? When Derrick and Kim came in, her color was returning and she looked more pink. I told Derrick what had happened and we talked about it for a minute. He said "Well, if that happens again, you should probably call the Dr." WHAT!?!? After he left, Kim and I looked at each other and agreed that this wasn't something you wait to see if it happens again. I called the Dr. immediately.
They were concerned and had us bring her in a couple of hours later. We saw Dr. Clark. She said that what had happened was called an ALTE. It stood for an Apparent Life Threatening Event. That phrase took my breath away. I know that life is fragile, but it is very different when you realize how easily it can be gone.
They wanted us to take her to DeVos Children's Hospital to have her monitored for a few days. We arrived at the hospital Friday night around 5:30 and they immediately started hooking her up to machines to moniter her heart rate, breathing rate, and oxygen level. Over the next few days she was monitored and many tests were run to see if they could find anything that would have caused her to stop breathing. They did bloodwork, 2 sets of x-rays, an echocardiogram, and an upper gi. Most of the results were within the normal range. There were some minor things they found, but nothing that concerned them.
It was extremely difficult to be in the hospital with Jordan only days after she was born. I wanted to be settling in at home spending time with my family and sleeping in my own bed, but instead, I was sleeping at the hospital and only saw my family for short time periods. I was sooo glad when they finally let us go home on Monday afternoon. They never fully determined what caused the breathing episode but seemed to think it was apnea.
We had Jordan on a portable monitor that continued to monitor her heart and breathing rate for 3 months. It felt so good to finally be home. Jordan had only a few apnic episodes according to the monitors but nothing that ever created another scare for us. We eventually became comfortable with her progress and assumed it was a fluke incident and that we didn't need to worry about it anymore. We finally took her off the monitor and trusted that she would be fine. We never again noticed anything unusual with her breathing.
No comments:
Post a Comment