The Infernal Machine
posted 04.01.2005 by Kristen

We took Rita in today for her two-week follow up appointment for the apnea monitor.

The bad news is that they want her to stay on it for a little while longer. The good news is that she only has to be on it at night!

This will be a huge improvement in our quality of life. Having her chained to the machine has been enormously frustrating and makes it especially difficult to care for both babies. For example, when she wakes up hungry, it means I have to leave her in the crib, screaming her head off, while I go warm up her bottle. With Natalie, I can carry her into the kitchen with me and comfort and cuddle with her while the bottle is warming. (Not that Nat's not screaming her head off the whole time, of course, but at least she knows that Mommy's there.) And Rita mostly stays in the nursery all the time because it's not as easy to just pick her up and carry her into whatever room I'm in. I feel like Natalie gets a wider range of stimulation. Not to mention the fact that Rita's wardrobe is severely limited by the fact that she can't wear anything with zippers, only snaps.

But now all that is (mostly) over! Yay!

The doctor said her data download from the machine looked pretty good everall, no true apneas/bradys. He did say that there were some preiods of low heartrate/slow breathing that he'd like to see improve, so he wants her to stay on the monitor for another three weeks and come back in for follow up, and most likely she'll be taken off the monitor altogether then.

In related news, Rita now weighs over six pounds -- 6 lbs., 1 oz., to be exact. Oink oink!