Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Breath holding

Wow, this has been a crazy month, the kids were out of school more than in and with the holidays it was crazy! Yesterday we ended up in the ER with Lily (14 months) she's fine but I was cleaning her nose (a small task right?) she went to scream and took a breath, released it, and stopped breathing, her face was turning blue, eyes were rolling back in her head (by this time I was jetting down the hallway with a limp baby screaming for my husband), she passed out as he was grabbing the phone to call 911 and I smacked her back a bit and she woke up breathing, whine for bout 2 seconds and then was dancing and giggling and acting like nothing happened! I was like what??!! I was so shaken up I smoked about 3 cigarettes in a row (yes outside in the cold lol) my husband sat with her while (me smoking) called her peditrician who told us to go to the ER he wanted her heart checked out along with her oxygen levels. She was put on a neubulizer in October for coughing (almost like an asthma cough but she's to little to test or diagnose for that) so we were pretty concerned. So I bundled her up (it was beautiful outside yesterday but I was taking no chances) and went to the hospital. They took one look at her, checked her heart and oxygen levels and told me this.
This isn't something she can control. She's not holding her breathe, or she wouldn't turn blue and pass out cause your brain would overpower your willpower especially in a child her age. I was just stunned and alarmed and she did a more mild one today! This is going to be the death of me now I can just see it. She's been a little stinker since she was concieved, causing headaches, diabetes and low blood pressure in mommy lol and then reflux, this maybe asthma thing and now this with her here!

Don't confuse this with her holding her breath. She's not doing this on purpose. And i think that's why it's so scary. Emelina used to physically hold her breath and i'd walk away. I knew she'd start breathing and well she didn't do nothing but make herself dizzy and she still didn't get what she wanted. She stopped after a few times realizing this wasn't going to get her what she wanted. But this is all together different and scary. Although the doctor said not to give her undue attention after this happens (extremely hard) cause they can't force themselves to do this but they could pick up the habit of the things that can cause this and could (but not always) trigger a reaccurance. ugh another thing to worry about cause when you see them do this it's terrifying and all you want to do is cuddle and hold them. I thought i was losing her yesterday and i was near hysterics and couldn't breath myself!

1 comment:

Leona said...

Wow! Scary! Thank you for informing us on this. Thank goodness I never had to deal with anything like that, just the usual stitches, dizzy spells, hits to the head...you know..that kind of stuff ;) Hope she doesn't do it too often, I'd be at my wits' end!