ferrousland.com - diary archives
Sunday, May 02, 2004
pausing, not dying - 06:37 AM
i wrote about half an hour earlier (about 4:30am) on the front page about having a cold & this being the reason why i'm up & awake now when normally i would be fast asleep .. or if not fast asleep, at least dosing while riley had a feed & then going back to sleep.
that's not the only reason why i'm wide awake though.
i woke up, as i usually do several times in the night, to check on riley, lying next to me in our bed. it's an automatic thing & i usually don't even remember doing it, since i rarely wake up fully. tonight though, not only did i wake up fully, but shroom woke up as well.
as i roused, i lifted my head to face riley. usually i hear his soft breathing & then lay my head down again .. but i didn't hear any breathing. i put my hand on his chest & back area & i didn't feel any movement. he was lying on his side away from me, so i rolled him onto his back & put my hand fully onto his chest. i still didn't feel his chest rising & falling. i then lifted his arm & dropped it. he seemed quite floppy .. possibly a little more than usual. this was waking me up rather quickly.
usually if i roll him over or move his arm or leg, he'll rouse himself a bit from his sleep & take a deep breath, but this hadn't happened. granted, i'd only been awake for about ten seconds, but in this space of time he would normally have breathed in & out about four times, or least have stirred when i shifted him around.
at this point, i was fully awake & up on my hands & knees above him. my mind was going through the steps for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but i did the last thing i would do before any drastic measures would have to be taken, i grabbed him around his little torso with both hands & shook him gently.
at this, he took a deep breath & stirred on his own, getting comfortable again in his sleep.
shroom was awake now & asked quickly, "are you okay?" i explained what happened & he asked me if i'd ever done that before. no, it has never happened before.
i've read a few articles about the sleep habits of babies & how they can suffer from sleep apnea, which is one of the theories on the possible causes of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). what i've read has told me that incidences of SIDS are much lower in countries where co-sleeping (that is, where the baby & the mother sleep in the same bed) is the norm. the SIDS phenomena is more prevalant in the so-called western world where co-sleeping is not the norm, & in some circles is actually considered odd or wrong.
i did a quick search & although i couldn't find the original articles, i did find two which say pretty much the same thing as what i'd read previously.
i'll quote the relevant bits here so you don't have to read through the whole lot.
this first article (from the fourth & bottom paragraph on that page) about SIDS, from the gale encyclopedia of childhood & adolescence, states:
- "Infants who share their mothers' beds become accustomed to frequent minor arousals when the mother shifts position, and their own sleep tends to be lighter and more even than that of infants who sleep alone in their cribs and are more prone to the heavier, but sporadic, breathing that stops and then starts up again with a gasp. Experts speculate that this lighter sleep not only makes it less likely for an infant to stop breathing but also that such an infant, with the "practice" gained from more frequent arousals every night, can be aroused more easily when any respiratory distress does occur."
the second article (from the third paragraph), katherine dettwyler, PhD, an associate professor of anthropology and nutrition at texas a&m university, writes:
- "Dr. James McKenna's research on co-sleeping clearly shows the dangers of solitary sleeping in young infants, who slip into abnormal patterns of very deep sleep from which it is very difficult for them to rouse themselves when they experience an episode of apnea (stop breathing). When co-sleeping, the mother is monitoring the baby's sleep and breathing patterns, even though she herself is asleep. When the baby has an episode of apnea, she rouses the baby by her movements and touch. This is thought to be the primary mechanism by which co-sleeping protects children from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In other words, many cases of SIDS in solitary sleeping children are thought to be due to them having learned to sleep for long stretches at a time at a very early age, so they find themselves in these deep troughs of sleep, then they may experience an episode of apnea, and no one is there to notice or rouse them from it, so they just never start breathing again."
sure, he may have begun breathing again on his own. he may have only been pausing, not dying, but i'm glad that he sleeps with me & that i didn't have to find out which one it was.
so anyway, after all that, i found it hard to go back to sleep. in fact, i lay there thinking that i may never sleep again while riley is sleeping & that i'll never have anyone else look after him in case they don't check on him while he's sleeping. of course, none of this is practical or possible, but these are the things you think when you're lying awake in the dark of the early morning, unable to go back to sleep.
i put him on my chest so that i could feel him closer to me since it gave me such a scare & i didn't want to let go of him. after about ten minutes i rolled us both onto our sides with his head resting on my arm, still unable to sleep, now being made even more difficult because my nose was beginning to drip out one nostril from this damn cold.
so that's why i'm still awake now, one hour later. i've been sitting here typing this with riley asleep against my chest in the sling & my poncho over both of us, keeping us cosy warm.
it's not light outside yet, but i don't think it'll be long until it is. it's a bit hard to tell anyway, since i'm sitting in the dark with the light of the computer monitor in my eyes.
i'm pouring myself another dose of head cold relief (homeopathic, since i'm breastfeeding & can't take the usual remedies) & managing to drip it on my desk & my lap & wondering if i'll be able to go back to sleep any time soon.
I can imagine just how long that 10 seconds felt.
And it sucks that you're sick again! You'll have to take out shares in vitamin C tablet companies!
We had a baby monitor and one night when my son was a month old I heard his breathing become strange, almost like the sound a kid makes after they have been screaming/crying for a very long time. I went to his room and like you .. couldn't wake him so we rushed into the car and I held him in the back seat. At one point he stopped breathing long enough for me to notice and I did what you did I gently shook him and he started breathing again. When we got to the hospital I was in a panic. They did all kinds of tests and came up with probably sleep apnea as the cause. They sent me home with a heart monitor that I had to hook him up to everynight. It gave me peace of mind and we never had a problem but it was really hard the day (about a month later) when we finally took him off the monitor. I didn't get any sleep that night. Nothing like that ever happened again and Logan is now a healthy and happy (he just bought his first car) 17 year old.
very scary. relieved to here it turned out okay. does make the point for the co-sleeping.
shocking title there
I hope he and you will be rid of that cold soon. It might have something to do with the apnea?
Ye gods, I just read this one, Corri ... How absolutely terrifying. It really does make you think, doesn't it.
Alia co-slept with us until she was 4 months old, then in a bassinet next to the bed from 4 to 7 months. The last 2 months she's been in her big-girl cot but still in our room (albeit the opposite side of the room).
I really only moved her out of the bed to try to encourage her to feed a little less frequently overnight (she was snacking every hour or so at 4 months, which was too tiring for me) and it worked well, in the bassinet she'd wake every 4-6 hours for a feed and in her cot she generally now, at 9 months, sleeps 10-11 hours through.
I still wake a few times a night and listen to her little sighs and noises, and sometimes I check on her. And when she's sick or teething, she comes into bed with us again. I can't imagine a time when I won't want to have her close.
gmail
com
oh my goodness. that would be scary!