Monitor Mayhem

Okay, I know, so we said we wanted Ella to go home on a cardiorespiratory monitor…is it too late to change our minds? LOL! That thing is just driving us nutty. There’s really nothing at all like having your baby attached to a 10 ft. cord with a flashing/beeping monitor on the end of it. The leads that attach to her chest are constantly being pulled off because we accidentally pull on the wires or because they stick to her clothes and come off. And of course these events cause the monitor to make it’s lovely high-pitch squeal until the leads are attached properly. And then, the thing goes off multiple times per day alerting us that she has stopped breathing for at least 18 seconds, except for the fact that we’re usually holding her on our chest and can hear and see her breathing! How annoying! And then when the thing goes off we have to record the date, time, # of beeps, what position the baby was in, etc. We have like a 30 page notebook of useless scribbles. The monitor company has already had to download the data from the thing twice because it got filled up. The pediatrician told us she received the results from the first download and there were 2 real apnea incidences and 2 real bradys. TRANSLATION: we will be on this monitor until god only knows when!!! We stepped outside yesterday because the weather was so nice and a neighbor and her 7-year-old daughter were walking by. She had noticed the stork on our lawn and anyway, her and Marilyn got talking and her daughter too was a preemie. She said she was born 2 months early and she was on the monitor for 10 MONTHS!!!! She said shallow breathing is what kept her daughter on it and she had to fight them to get them to take it away. Aye yae yae! I’m all about the monitor if it is necessary, but Ella does so much shallow breathing that I’m afraid she’s never going to come off of it. Time will tell…