Silence is Golden...Or Is It?

Until you are a parent you can't really understand the paranoia associated with SIDS and your baby's sleeping. I think of Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment" where she thinks her daughter isn't breathing and pinches her to see if she is alive thereby waking the baby up. So funny because it is so true. Many a time I have put my hand on Jax's chest to see if it is going up and down because I couldn't tell by looking at him that he was alive and breathing. Babies breathe so shallowly and barely move at all that it is no wonder we are worried. Crib Death or SIDS has frightened parents for as long as we have had the written word or even hieroglyphics. Too bad the Egyptians didn't have this handy device.

We recently received and installed the Angelcare Movement Sensor into Jax's crib (thanks Grandma Shirley). I had been glued to his video monitor and had been doing the paranoid parent SIDS check every once and awhile if I couldn't see him moving on the monitor. It is so funny to be a parent as there are many ironies involved. All I want is for Jaxon to sleep and to sleep soundly (he is restless a lot of the time--thrashing about like a crazy person in his sleep) yet whenever he finally does so it sends Drew and I into a slight panic. Is he still breathing? Why isn't he moving? Should we check on him? Slowly and quietly we creep into his room to put our hand on his chest taking the chance that he might wake up with us doing so. It isn't only us...I see his grandparents doing this too.

Hence the new gadget. It is pretty cool I must say so myself. Giving parents a little more comfort. Basically it is a sensor pad put under the crib mattress. It can feel his slightest movement...even his breathing. If he stops moving for 20 seconds it sounds an alarm on our hand held monitors and in Jax's room to startle him into breathing again. It is mainly for baby sleep apnea not technically for SIDS but it still would alarm us to his ceasing to breathe in general for any reason. I already feel myself relaxing in many ways with this handy new invention monitoring my baby's every breath.

There is one part that Drew and I both agree bothers us. You can set the hand held monitor to tick every time he moves or breathes. I of course set ours to do this as I want to be sure the monitor is working. So basically we hear a tick every 3 seconds or so as he breathes in and out. It pretty much fades into the background and you don't notice it after 5 minutes or so. That is unless it doesn't tick for a long period. Every once and awhile the tick takes 5-10 seconds, which drives both of us nuts. It is the longest wait when that happens...waiting for Jaxon to take his next breath. I know that babies have irregular breathing patterns for the first few months of life but still it is nerve wracking to wait for that next tick sometimes. But then it happens and we can stop holding our breath in anticipation for Jaxon's next breath.

All in all I love the new monitor. Peace of mind comes in handy little contraptions. We have had the alarm go off only one time so far. Hard to say if it was a false alarm or if Jaxon really didn't move or breathe for 20 seconds. Either way the alarm went off for a short 3-4 seconds until it felt him move again. By then both Drew and I were already in his room looking into his crib at a sleeping little baby. Maybe the monitor startled him enough to take a breath or maybe it was a false alarm and he was fine the whole time. In the end I would take a thousand false alarms to the other option of him not breathing.