Breathing Spells

As a fully functioning human, there are many things you have to remember. Breathing is not one of them. Your body does this for you and it never stops (with rare exceptions such as sleep apnea and public speaking). In premature babies this functionality isn't quite finished yet. While on the ventilator it is not an issue. When breathing on his own, baby can simply "forget" to breathe every once in a while. There is medication (!) to help with this but it isn't fool proof.

So... every once in a while, Mathias will stop breathing. This triggers the following sequence of events: 1) his pulse will drop, 2) an alarm will be triggered on his incubator (see, there's a reason for all those cords attached to him!), and 3) a nurse will immediately reach in and touch him which jump-starts the breathing. From start to finish we're talking something like four seconds.

These spells cause sharply elevated blood pressure, shortness of breath, flop-sweats, dizziness, nausea, and nervous disorders - in the parents sitting next to the incubator. I'm not entirely sure that Mathias notices them at all. This happened twice today. That is not considered a large number of times. If we see elevated spells he may need to go back on the breathing apparatus. Nobody wants the breathing apparatus. Keep your fingers crossed that we're coming out of this. The folks at Children's have turned up the oxygen level in his air which should help.