Thursday, February 24, 2011

Blast From The Past

I promised past posts leading up to Davis' 2nd birthday.

I plan on delivering!!!

Here is a post from February 27, 2009.

And this one from February 21, 2010.

Both pretty boring to be honest.

But I said I'd post this stuff.

I only had 3 blog posts in February 2010.

Why?

Davis had been going on nearly a year of only sleeping 8-10 hours total per day.

Not 8-10 hours at night people.

TOTAL!!  That is night and naps.

He napped twice a day then, usually 2 hours each nap.

His night sleeping was spotty.

2 hours.

Wake up.

Struggle for 2-3 hours to get him back to sleep.

2 more hours.

Up for the day.

I am not exaggerating.

I think a lot of people back then thought I was.

I wasn't.

My child NEVER slept.

This went on until he was 15 months old.

And people wonder why we are so hesitant for a 2nd.

I'm ready for a 2nd.

My husband on the other hand, is not.

He might warm up to the idea sometime though. 

He just needs more time to get over that period in our lives.

It wasn't pretty.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it.

It was bad.

Bad in a lot of ways.

Bad on me, bad on my husband, bad on our marriage.

Lack of sleep does really interesting things to people.

We feel like we just got back to being and feeling normal again.

So why ruin a good thing.

Not that a 2nd child would ruin us.

But we are scared.

Scared of the unknown.

Scared that another baby would be the same way.

Of course Davis had an issue that went undiagnosed by our first group of pediatricians.

I was ignored.

I am pretty sure they thought I was an overbearing first time mom.

My husband got fed up, so we switched pediatricians, he picked them.

Good job Jeff!!!!!

Our issue was addressed when Davis was 10 months old.

Surgery at 12 months old.

But we were told by the surgeon we would not see improvements in our son until he was at least 6 weeks out from surgery.

He was right.

At 6 weeks to the day (no joke), Davis' sleep habits improved greatly.

I could cry writing this, the problem Davis had was sleep apnea caused by very enlarged adenoids and something called Laryngomalacia.

The surgery Davis had to correct this is peformed on babies as young as 4 weeks.

Funny because that is when I started mentioning it to the first group of pediatricians we went to.

Every appointment I'd say something about it.

Oh, all kids do that they'd say.

Really??  All kids sound like freight trains when they sleep?  Snoring so loud you can hear them all the way in the back of the house?  They all gasp for air? 

I'm bitter towards them, I would never recommend them to anyone.

Sad because they are a really large group of peds, I'm sure half the city goes there.

When we saw the new doctor she was amazing.

She listened to me.

She said, mimic the sounds he makes for me.

So I did.

She also did something our other doctor never did, she tested his oxygen levels.

They were low.

Lower than they should be.

Not low enough to hospitalize him though, but right on the border.

All because of the adenoids and laryngomalacia.

She told me what she suspected, asked me to get the camcorder out when he was sleeping, bring it back in a week, let her listen and we'd go from there.

She listed to my tape of him and sent us to an ENT.

I'm telling you, I love that woman.  If it wasn't for her, I'm not sure where would be.

And how did this post turn into that rant?

1 comment:

Sassytimes said...

Awe, Jill. I feel for you. 15 months is a long time to go with no sleep. I can imagine what that would do to your relationship. Kudos to you guys for getting through it.

I can't believe the Ped. would not have noticed that?!?! Wow. Wow. Our first Ped. did the same thing with Sophia until she was 6 months old regarding her reflux. Told me all babies cry all.day.long and never sleep. She was out one day when S had a bad cold; took her to another Dr. on staff and within 5 minutes she noticed, diagnosed and treated the reflux. Within days, we had a new child. It was amazing. Still, whenever I see that first Dr. walking around I cringe. I can't even imagine how different our lives would have been back then had she listened to me.

...and in closing...the 2nd baby is so much easier. ;)