I never thought I would be one of those uber paranoid moms. Breathing tools are simply for such paranoid parents that don’t let their 18 year olds out of their sights. This was not me and my husband. Until, of course, my baby stopped breathing. When we got home from the hospital, our doctors had given us strict instructions that she was to be monitors 24 / 7 until she no longer held her breath before she coughed. My husband and I took shifts staying up with her the first two days. It was hard and grueling, but we were making it work. She was getting better and I knew any day now she wouldn’t need the intense supervision we were giving her. Also, as a side note, you have no idea what intense supervision is until you spend all of 3am until 7am staring directly at a baby to make sure they are breathing. I was so scared to look away that when I did, I would put my hand on her stomach. But things were getting better. She was typically only holding her breath once or twice a day. But I knew, something awful was about to happen. My husband had to go back to work. And because he had missed so much, he was scheduled to work two shifts in a row, for EMT time, this is 48 hours. This meant I was to be home by myself with a baby, for 48 hours. 48 hours that I felt I would not be able to be asleep the entire time. After all I was still giving her the stare-down on my watches. In comes the Snuza. In preparation of Tim’s return to work, we broke down and bought a breathing monitor. It may have been the single best thing we ever purchased. For those of you who don’t know, this little monitor clips onto your babies diapers or pants and if it senses your baby is not breathing sounds an incredibly loud, incredibly annoying alarm; not just an alarm, the wake up your neighbors, car alarm in the middle of the night type alarm. Awesome. The first night it got used was the night was at work. I had tested it all that day and was completely confident in its abilities. If I didn’t turn it off for diaper changes it went off, if it was on the baby I could see it moving and doing its job. I held it to my belly and held my breath, and off it went. I even managed to get a little sleep that night. We had no breath holding fits.
Another fantastic thing about the Snuza was that since this thing was portable, it meant I could put it on her in the car. This meant I could sit up front with my husband like a normal civilized adult. Before I was riding in the back in case I needed to jostle breathing. It was a fact, I was in love with this little gadget that allowed us to resume everyday crazy parent-worrying, not crazy obsessed, read my daughters e-mails, worried parent.
There is nothing like a traumatic incident to transform you into one of the psycho paranoid parents you always made fun of.
