Will - 8 Weeks

Look at my chubby little man!! He's 8 weeks old today!!!

And I've got a little story to tell you about him today:

From the start I've noticed that he's different from my other babies...

He snores.

He gets choked up a lot, especially when he's eating.

His breathing seems irregular sometimes.

Now all that is probably totally normal to a certain degree, but I had some nagging worry in the back of my mind.

I priced apnea monitors, just to put my mind at ease, but they were too expensive so I dismissed the idea.

After all, my other two kids were just fine and they never had monitors.

Then Ryan came home from work one day a little shaken....a friend of a friend had a 7 month old baby die of SIDS.

All the sudden spending some extra money didn't seem like such a silly idea.

I priced the exact same monitor again and Amazon.com had gotten a bunch of them in stock and the price had dropped $35!

Then next day Ryan's parents sent us a card with money in it to buy something for Will.

Fifteen minutes later I bought that apnea monitor.

The monitor came two days later and it took me another few days to set it up.

Obviously I wasn't too worried.

Then one night last week at 3:24am THE ALARM WENT OFF!

It only goes off if the baby stops breathing for 20 seconds.

Go ahead and count to 20...it is a long time for a baby to hold it's breath.

The alarm went off in my room but also in his room and it startled him.

He took a big breath and stirred around and kept sleeping.

I wasn't sure if I would ever sleep again.

I'm so thankful for all the coincidental events that led me to buy that monitor.

I have no doubt that it was the Lord's provision and protection over my little boy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be dramatic.

Who knows he could have taken a breath after 21 seconds all on his own.

I have a feeling most babies probably have periods of apnea it's just that a tiny few never take the next breath and that is heartbreaking.

Suddenly I'm a big fan of apnea monitors and I think that everyone who has a baby should spend the $120 to have one. They're so affordable now!!

So many parents spend tons of money on video monitors and I think they can mentally make you feel better, but you can't see if they're still breathing on a video monitor. I have my apnea monitor set up so it ticks every time it senses movement. So I know even if Will's breathing pattern changes. I can tell when he's in a deep sleep because he breathes slower. At first the tick was a little annoying, but now it's become reassuring (and you can set it so it doesn't tick...I just like it). Okay, enough about the monitor!

Bottom line...

Will is fine. I'm not worried about him.

I am however thankful for his guardian angel and for his "Angel Care" monitor!

This is his new trick. He just started sucking on his fist. I'm hoping the thumb will come out of that grip soon, so he can be a thumb sucker. I think thumb suckers make happy babies, unfortunately they make for bad teeth, but we can worry about that later.

Will seriously changes every day.

Some days he's happy.
Some days he wants to be held all the time.

Most nights he wakes up twice, but I'm totally okay with that.

He's becoming a good sleeper :) We're getting there!

As far as I'm concerned....

it took 8 weeks, but I'm feeling pretty great.

I did pick up McKenna earlier this week and I regretted it.

But overall, I'm back to normal.

yay!!