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Hi Parenting thread! First time parent here. Got what might be a bit of an issue with our two month old son. A heads up that this post is about baby health, brief mention of an emergency c-section, and worries about SIDS if you'd rather not read that. TL;DR: Yesterday and today, our 2 month old son has had moments where he is borderline impossible to wake; when researching this, found there may be a genetic link between not being easy to rouse from sleep and SIDS; am now really worried. After six long years of trying (and finally getting help over the finishing line from Japan's incredibly affordable IVF treatments) my wife and I welcomed our little lad Rowan into the world two months ago. His entry into the world was a little dicey: waters broke two and a half weeks early and he ended up having to be delivered via emergency c-section because his unbilical chord was wrapped around his throat and mom's contractions meant his heart rate would drop dangerously low. Surgery was fine though and both he and mom recovered quickly. Since then, for two months it has seemed like he is the most perfect child one could hope for: rarely cries outside of when he is hungry and I can't provide a bottle quick enough; settles quickly when given back to mom for a bit if he is upset; sleeps calmly for extended periods of time in his crib (we had some issues early on with him getting turned onto his side, but always corrected it and it has disappeared); drinks easily from both breast and bottle; is alert and looking around when not asleep (everyone always seems a little surprized at how he is able to push himself up from chest contact and be turning his head to "look" this way and that) , etc. You name it, we've probably had the best experience of it. Until last night. Last night, after a feed and a little bit of a contact nap on mom (mom awake and alert at all times), he would not wake from sleep and was completely limp/floppy. He was breathing fine, and reacting to stimuli some (e.g. foot would move away from strokes on the sole, would grunt or frown at some other stimuli), but would not wake up. We tried everything we could think of: splashes of cold water, rubbing his chest, jiggling him, light (and less than light) pinches on his earlobe, etc.. Nothing. One frantic phone call to emergency services and ambulance ride to ER later, he eventually woke up and started crying when the hospital started to take blood from him. After which he was perfecrly fine. The bloods came back all clear and an x-ray they did was fine as well. Hospital said that there was no indication that anything was wrong with him so just keep an eye on him and take him to a clinic if it happens again (this was all happening out of clinic hours). Cue today, and everything seems fine. Until it happens again in the afternoon. I had him on my chest (again, awake and alert) since he was fussing in his crib and his mom was trying to nap (we live in a tiny Japanese apartment, so all our rooms are literally right next to each other) and he would not wake, even when I was changing his daiper which he usually is not a fan of. Again, he was breathing and responsive to stimuli - more so than yesterday - but this time was not completely floppy/limp. But he would not rouse from sleep despite trying all of what we did yesterday and even briefly placing a frozen bag of breat milk against his chest, hoping the cold would shock him out of it. Eventually, we did get him to rouse and he had a good cry and all was normal since then, but it took a lot to get him up. What with this being our first (and probably only) child, I have no idea if being this hard to rouse is normal or not. It certainly doesn't feel like it though. Like a fool, I tried to do some research (i.e. googling) and what quickly came up was that there may be a genetic link in children (low levels of an enzyme butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) in blood at birth) between finding it difficult to wake up and SIDS. So of course now we're trying not to freak out about this but can't help but look back at the past two months and start to question things. Like, are we just lucky that he is an amazing sleeper who 8 times out of 10 will settle down in his crib and sleep solidly for a long/reasonable time before waking to feed and chill out, or is this a symptom of him finding it difficult to wake up and thus putting him at greater risk? We already do everything we can to limit the risks. We take shifts at night so one of us is always awake and in the room checking in with him; he sleeps in a crib on a firm crib matress with no soft extras in there with him; he is always on his back when asleep in the crib; he always has a paci when he goes down to sleep but we don't force him to keep it in his mouth; neither of us smoke; mom doesn't drink alcohol at all and I rarely have even a single beer now that he's here since Japan has a zero tolerance drinking and driving policy; we try our best to keep the room cool (difficult in Okinawa!) and generate good air flow; etc etc. But we can't help but be kind of freaked out about it right now. We have an appointment at his pediactric clinic tomorrow to go over our concerns but I was just hoping that the collective goon experience would be able to either reassure or advise us about this! Obviously our first thing is to really reduce the amount of time he is contact napping on either of us, but apart from that we are at a loss. Sorry to have such a monster of a first post here. We have no family in Japan with us and - while my wife has a discord group she gets a load of support from - I don't really know where else I can turn to for advice/ideas/support. Also apologies for the extensive use of parenthesis and semi-colons! Thoughts are complicated and so is getting them down into text! Calexio fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 15:45
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space uncle posted:Could you buy something like the Owlet Baby Sat to monitor heart rate and blood oxygen? That's a possibility! Although knowing me it may just be another thing to fret over. Speaking of fretting, I am looking to go back to my mental health doc and review my anxiety meds. Hippie Hedgehog posted:
He has recently stepped up his feeding game and he had eaten an astonishing amount over the course of the day. We hadn't really clocked how much - it was just a case of "Oh, you're still hungry? Okay then!" and log it throughout the day - until we were talking to the nurse at the hospital and checked the app we use to log everything and saw that it was the most he's ever drunk in a day (per the volume of expressed breast milk taken from a bottle on top of feeds from mom) by a good 1.5x more than his previous highest. Hippie Hedgehog posted:I don't fault anyone for googling at a time like that, but (as you probably figured out already) there are no answers for your particular case in a web search. I'd advise taking all the usual precautions and trusting the statistics. You're already doing everything right: Sleep on flat surface, on back, no loose objects, don't smoke, don't share a bed, use a pacifier if he will take one. Beyond the official advice, there is no (statistically proven) measure you can take to improve the odds, so it's in the hands of whatever higher power you believe in. Thank you. It's good to have an external point of view remind us that yes, we are doing all we can. Just got to trust and hope! As for the sleep, we do what we can. I take a two hour shift 10pm to 12am (and usually grab a quick nap sometime between 8pm and 9:00pm), my wife does 12am to 4am, then I do 4am to 6:30am on my workdays, or as long as she can get until she needs to pump on my days off. Maternity leave in Japan is pretty good so she's not working at the moment but lord knows being on baby duty all day is not a vacation. Throughout the day when we're both home. we cover each other for whatever naps we need and can get in. In lighter news, recently he let out a huge burp after feeding and when I said, "Whoa buddy, that was a good one!" he looked up at me and literally gave a thumbs up. Just a marvelous concidental coming together of various baby functions and random body movements. I'm also reading to him although as we don't have any baby books just yet, and since he can't understand it anyway, our current book is The Fisherman by John Langan. Of course any time he smiles while reading together is definitely an early sign he's going to be a horror head like his dad when he grows up, and absolutely not that he has just done a massive wee. EDIT: Also, regarding infant CPR - we both work in the same school which has yearly CPR training that includes infant and baby CPR so no worries there, although I am definitely going to review it now myself. Calexio fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 21:38
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in_cahoots posted:Regarding the sleep worries: my first had a weird hiccup-type noise breathing when he slept, and the doctor was so concerned about the video we took that we spent a night in the hospital doing some sort of sleep study. Of course trying to get a baby to sleep covered in wires in a hospital bed is its own kind of hell, but it may be worth it for peace of mind. Funny you should say that. Long story short he's been admitted for observation for three nights and they're going to do blood tests; hook him up to heart monitors and oxygen saturation monitors overnight; and do more tests tomorrow morning (it's half seven in the evening here now). Long story long: We went to the clinic today as planned and they didn't know what was going on so they referred us to a nearby hospital. At the hospital, we spoke to two different doctors who also didn't know what was going on so wanted to admit him for three nights, which means we will have to reschedule his first slate of vaccines but we just want to know what the gently caress is going on. We had planned to go join our local library today to see if they have any English children's books. Because of strict hospital rules about chaperones in the face of influenza etc. only one of us can stay with him, which means my wife since my Japanese is just about good enough to get by day to day, not this. So I ran home to grab a bag of essentials for each of them and handed them over before having to leave. Now I'm just home alone. At least I won't have to do my two shifts in the night haha. Ha. An hour ago it happened again (wife got a video this time too) and it took her and two doctors trying to wake him before he did, after which he immediately screamed, which he never does. He has his grumbles and groans and might let out a little yell to get attention but never full on screaming immediately. At least now someone else knows what it is we've been seeing. The hospital is trying to request the ambulance report from the first night (different hospital) and is going to do bloods; hook him up to heart monitors and oxygen saturation monitors overnight; and then more tests in the morning. So they're taking it super seriously which is good. I just hope my amazing wife gets through the night okay. She's been an absolute hero for him. As for him, he seems fine again and he was feeding furiously when his mom called to let me know what happened. I'm not going to lie, I thought I was holding it together fine until I heard him and now I'm a mess. I just want to hold and tell him it's going to be okay, even though he won't understand. I've had to settle for asking his mom to video call me when he's being put to bed so I can tell him good night and that I love him. All over sleeping too good! Side note: Everyone keeps calling him by his middle name because they don't really understand how Western names work in that regard and it bugs me more than it maybe should. I interrupted a nurse earlier about it and I'm not one for interrupting usually. Thanks again for all the comments and advice folks. I'm not much one for posting (check the startlingly low post count) but I'll try to be active here and not just post about my own poo poo which I know will get obnoxious quick. Also if this post doesn't make sense it's because I accidentally deleted the whole middle third of it just before posting. I think the rewrite makes sense but I'm too tired to fix it any more if it doesn't.
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Mar 28, 2024 12:03
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cuber posted:Little guy (2.5yo) was mopey tonight, kept complaining, got mad about any of the food I tried to make for him, would go to his room and cry, come out 15 minutes later to tell me, "I'm sad!" We'd try to get what's wrong out of him, but figured he was just tired from not having a nap. I hope this is sorted out for your little fella soon. Fingers crossed the daycare can help him out. I, Butthole posted:Our little dude got a balloon for the first time the other day and has been waddling around holding on to it for near 24 hours. He has also been using it as a pillow and leaning on it every so often. There is a ticking time bomb in my house and I don't like it. How goes the balloon? Still holding on by some miracle? Also all the head-bonker stories are very cute.  harperdc posted:This happens to me all the drat time at work because I had to put the full government in there for consistency’s sake. Thanks for the offer! I'm way down south in Okinawa though. I'm lucky enough that I have some awesome Japanese co-workers who have been there for us. The first night it happened, I phoned one of them in a panic because we were struggling with the language barrier and she was on the phone with me for almost a half hour and then disrupted her entire evening to come meet us at the hospital to help us out. She's incredible and I have no idea how I can repay her. It all turned out okay, but she was willing to be there on what could have been the worst night of our lives if it all went south. I feel you about the birth too. The rules had relaxed slightly by the time we had our boy, but even then I had to leave at 1pm on the first day of labor (water broke unexpectedly at 6am two and a half weeks early, but it was clear that nothing was going to be happening by the afternoon) and was only allowed to hold him briefly after the birth and then could only visit for a half hour every day and see him in the baby room through a window for a week until my wife got them discharged. It was tough! We're all back home from the hospital now - apparently the plan was always two nights, not three! - and it's a mixture of good news while still not having a definite answer, if there was ever even one to have. On top of having him hooked up to a pulse and oxygen saturation monitor the whole time, yesterday they also ran a series of tests on his blood, poop and pee. Poop and pee came back no issues at all. Bloods were also fine by and large apart from one test (CK-MB) which came back slightly abnormal, which could indicate a heart issue, but another test to check for potential heart issues (CPK?) came back normal. So they ordered an echogrdiogram just in case, which they ran today and also checked his stomach and liver while they were at it. And it turns out all is fine! Liver is apparently slightly on the large side but within normal range and not enlarged to the point he could be sick because of it. Heart walls are all good etc. So it is good that we know he is in fine fettle, and I guess he's just a super deep sleeper? Final advice was that if it happens again and he is breathing, responding to stimuli and still has good color, then it's probably all fine, just keep an eye on him. We have a follow up in two weeks just in case. We were also able to reshedule his first raft of vaccines to Monday morning, which is a relief! He seems perfectly fine though! So we'll just focus on that for now. Also, he seems to have done a mad amount of developing in the two days since he was last home. He's frequently trying to roll over now (not there just yet!) and is more clearly focusing on and following things that interest him, like the traditional Japanese mobile hanging above his crib that I swear he was reaching for this afternoon and definitely turned to follow as I gently moved it. Shout out as well to the magic little pink card we were given by city hall that means all of the things we had to do this week (ambulance ride, ER admittance and testing, visit to his pediatric clinic, referral to another hospital, three day admittance for observation and a raft of tests) were completely free. Absolute life-saver!
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Mar 30, 2024 07:23
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Brawnfire posted:There's something magical about holiday breaks. My wife got laryngitis and lost her voice THURSDAY NIGHT. I tested positive for COVID Christmas morning 2021. Was at my parents' and had been feeling a little rough all week but kept testing negative and then bam! Cue a special Christmas trip to get a PCR test for me and the evacuation of my brother and his severely asthmatic wife ASAP to travel three hours back to a home with nothing prepared for Christmas. Hope that everyone's Easter illnesses pass as quickly and easily as possible!
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Mar 30, 2024 22:19
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kazz posted:I became a mommy this morning at 1:32 AM, and I couldn’t have had a better birth. I had a scheduled induction because of type 2 diabetes, and I was really expecting a long process with a worry that it wouldn’t work and end in a c-section. Instead, I only had to take 2 out of 3 doses of the misoprostol, skipped right past starting pitocin because my water broke as the nurse was going to turn it on, felt WONDERFUL once I got my epidural after going from 3 cm to 7 cm dilated in 2 hours, and only pushed for 12 minutes. From start to finish, it took 15 hours. Congratulations! Welcome to the parenting world.
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Mar 31, 2024 04:53
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Parental fear I never thought I'd experience: tsunami warning where we live. I'm at work and Mrs C and the boy are at home. By all accounts we are both perfectly safe - our home is far inland and the neighbors have said not to worry, and school is 90m above sea level - but it's still pretty terrifying!
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Apr 3, 2024 01:54
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space uncle posted:My 3 year old just wore underpants to school for two days straight with only 1 accident, and then today he pooped in the potty for the first time. Red letter day. Congrats, little one! One thing I've just realised I don't actually know if: do all babies make the same noises? I've always assumed they do. The only babies I have been around in decades are mine and a friend's. My friend's little one didn't really make any noises at all when we were with them but ours is constantly sounding off. He specializes in "awoo"s like some kind of tiny wolf. I was cuddling with him this evening and he gave a proper rise and fall, "AwooOOoo." I just about melted. Calexio fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 11:45
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 01:19 |
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kazz posted:I love my 2-week-old’s sleepy noises. He suddenly made the same kind of noise in his sleep the other day, a big WOOOO followed by … eh. It makes me wonder what they’re thinking about. It is the most adorable little sound. It has just occurred to me that babies'll have - I assume - a more limited range of noises available to them, what with the lack of teeth and all. Anyone have any advice on how to ease a clingy baby? Our little one is attached like velcro to mom at the moment after his hospital stay. If I take him, there's like a good 85% chance he will almost immediately start wailing. Which isn't exactly fun for me and really limits our ability to give Mrs C as much of a break as she used to get.
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Apr 15, 2024 12:02
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