SIDS

I don't know why but for some reason I have been terrified that my son is going to die from SIDS. After I had my girls it was always at the back of my mind but I didn't sit up night after night holding them to make sure they're still breathing like I have done with my son.

My son was born in June and I have been an active part of babycenter.com since I found out I was pregnant with him. In August one of the June mothers lost her son to SIDS and then last month another mother lost her baby, possibly to SIDS. After I heard about the first one I kept having nightmares. In my nightmares Death appeared as a butterfly and sprinkled purple polk-a-dots all over the people when they died. Death was after me and for whatever reason I was in a pickup with all of my kids trying to outrun it but it got in anyway. Instead of killing me, it sprinkled my son with purple polk-a-dots and he died instead. The dream was so real that when I woke up I had to think for just a second to remember where I was. I hate those kind of dreams, even if they're good dreams. I looked over at my son and had a hallucination. I thought I saw him covered in purple polk-a-dots. The feeling of complete despair and utter horror came over me. I can still remember it today. For those split few seconds I thought he was dead I wanted to be dead too. I picked him up and when he woke up the relief that washed over me was so overwhelming that I started crying. I've had that nightmare several times since then.

For a few weeks after that I didn't sleep hardly at all. I stayed up and held my son making sure that he was breathing. I seriously fought sleep and only fell asleep when my body simply could not take it anymore. And I only slept long enough so I could be awake again. I went for quite a long time with about 2 hours of sleep each night. I made myself sick.

During those nights I would research SIDS on the internet. I looked up statistics to see how at risk my son is for SIDS. 50 out of 100,000 babies die of SIDS. In reality that number is quite low but still 50 babies too many. Males die more than females. Black babies are highest at risk. My son is half black but I didn't find any statistics for biracial/multiracial babies. I breast feed, I don't smoke, I don't let people smoke around him. Babies who have mothers who have their first child before the age of 20 are at higher risk (even if they are not the baby who was born before the mother was 20). At 20 I had two kids so that is another strike. Most babies die between 2-4 months. He's less than 2 weeks away from 4 months old.

I finally bought an Angel Care monitor online for half the price they are out of the stores. That thing is awesome. It has low beeps for movement that is detected, after 15 seconds of no movement it gives of a loud beep and after 20 seconds the alarm goes of. It is so sensitive that it detected the ceiling fan as movement. I did a whole bunch of tests to see what would and wouldn't effect it and now I have it set up so that I am happy with it.

My son is a silent choker. From day one, he's spit up a lot. When we were still in the hospital he started choking but didn't make any sound. The nurse was checking on him at the time and rushed him out to the nursery. He turned blue but they got him breathing again. They took him for a few hours and had him under an oxygen hood to make sure that he was okay. There have been several times since then that he has choked and I just happened to be looking at him when he was doing it or I would not have known and would not have been able to help him.

Last night my Angel Care Monitor was more than worth its weight in gold. I'm a very light sleeper so when the beep at 15 seconds of no movement went off I woke up. I heard some gurgling noise, not very loud and they would not have woke me up. I was wide awake and went to the crib and picked my son up. He was choking and if he hadn't stopped breathing and moving for those 15 seconds to set off the beep I wouldn't have known. If I hadn't had the monitor, I wouldn't have known. I flipped him head down and sucked the junk out of his throat and he started breathing again. Then he spit up a whole bunch. I highly recommend this monitor to anyone who has infants.

When I was pregnant with my oldest my ex husband's sister lost her daughter to SIDS. That was 8 years ago and I still think about it. I haven't talked to my ex sister in law in over 7 years but I still think about her. My heart goes out to everyone who has ever lost a child. One of my daughter's friends lost his brother to SIDS a few years back. I didn't know the family very well but it was still so horrible to think about.

My grandma lost her son when he was only a few days old. It wasn't SIDS, it was because of a heart defect. My son looks a lot like he did. He was such a cute little boy and what makes it even worse, it is a condition that would have been detected on an ultrasound today and fixed at birth. I thank God for all the medical advances we have because it has saved lives of many children and prevented many deaths.

I love how little my son is, and since he is my last I don't want him to grow up too fast... But I think I'll sleep a lot better when he's old enough to roll around so I don't have to worry about him choking.