Monday, February 15, 2010

Living in spit

Seriously, spit is everywhere in this house. It's on my shoulder, in my hair, on my pants. It stains our rags, her bibs, her clothes. It's caked around her lips, even crusted under her nose. It's on her sheets, on my hair ties, under her chin, at the nape of her neck.

At first this concerned me. Especially after the episode she had in the hospital. I was worried she would choke, turn blue and I wouldn't be able to revive her. Fortunately that hasn't happened and as she grows stronger every day she learns how to cope with it and so do I.

Senorita Chub Chubs spent the first 7 weeks sleeping in our room. Frequently during the night I would hear this: *grunt* *grunt* *gurgle* *slurp* *gasp* *swallow* *gasp* *swallow* and repeat. To which I would spring out of bed every.single.time. hold her up pat her back, wipe the spit off her chin and set her down again. Now since this happened at least 10 times between feedings you can imagine how much sleep I was getting. At 7 weeks we decided it was time to put her in her own room, especially since she'd proven to us that she could recover from these episodes on her own. The only problem with putting her in her room is that now we were using the monitor and since the monitor picks up every little sound, we were now hearing this: *grunt* *grunt* *gurgle* *slurp* *gasp* *swallow* *gasp* *swallow*, only magnified and I didn't have the option of turning over and taking a peek at her to see if she was ok.

Enter Video Monitor

I heart our video monitor so much. It has given me the gift of sleep. Not only can I just peek over at the monitor to make sure whatever strange noises she's making aren't serious BUT it also isn't as sensitive as our previous monitor. In fact it only picks up noises that are as loud as a casual conversation which is all I really want to hear anyway since it usually indicates she's waking up. This video monitor won't do the laundry for me, or wipe the spit that is running down my arm and pooling at my hair tie, but it will help minimize all the spitty noises and gurgles coming from my darling little baby's mouth at 2am. She doesn't seem to be bothered by the spit and now I don't have to be either!

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