Patrick Ryan
("Ricky") was born at home on the 29th of January, 1998, a planned homebirth. The birth went as planned and there were no complications. I had an ultrasound at around the 20th week of the pregnancy because my midwife and I heard very significant heart decelerations on two different occasions. The ultrasound showed no problems, however, and after that we never heard anything out the ordinary again. The doctor theorized that he may have been squeezing his cord somehow.
He was born a little after midnight, and we had a good night's rest and a relaxing day the next day. Stephanie (my midwife) came ver that evening to say "hi," and talk. While we were talking, I nursed the baby, and we both noticed at the same time that he was turning blue. I pulled him away and started talking to him, rubbing his back. He didn't look like Sam had, though. He wasn't completely limp, but he had his eyes open and was looking right at Stephanie, and he wasn't even trying to breathe, he just had this serene look on his face. I didn't think he would start breathing again. He just didn't seem to care. Stephanie started flicking his foot, and almost took him from me so she could start breathing for him when he very calmly began breathing. He didn't gasp or take a deep breath, just started again as if he'd never stopped. I was so horrified; all I could think was "Not again!" We took him to a different hospital this time, because they had a new NICU which was much more baby-friendly. We called our pediatrician, so when we got there we went straight to the NICU, totally bypassing the emergency room. Ricky got his own room, and the visiting hours were much more flexible. We were there for five days, and I stayed with him the whole time. They finally got tired of seeing me sleep in the chair in his room and gave us a post partum room. I used it as little as possible. My mom stayed with the boys so Scott (my husband) could spend more time at the hospital. The boys were brought up to see me once a day, and they did very well.
The doctors ran a few tests and couldn't figure out what was wrong. He did have reflux, but it wasn't causing the apnea. The doctor put him on caffeine, because he felt that it was something called immature respiratory response and that was how they treated it, but I've never felt comfortable with that diagnosis. Patrick was not premature, and this is usually related to prematurity. The test for this condition was also negative. The only reason he was diagnosed with this is because he responded to the treatment for it. He was sent home on the caffeine and another drug called Reglan, for reflux, because while his reflux was not that bad, caffeine makes reflux worse. So he was given a drug to counter the effects of another drug. About a week later we missed a dose of the Reglan and noticed he actually spit up less without it. So we quit giving him the Reglan, and his personality improved, too. He was slowly weaned off the caffeine over a period of about six weeks. He was on an apnea monitor for seven months. It didn't go off very often. Early one morning it went off and when we turned the light on, he had that same peaceful look on his face. I yelled his name and he started breathing again, the same as before, as if he'd never stopped. That was the only significant episode he had after coming home, and they took him off the monitor a couple of months after that. I suspect his apnea was somehow related to the decelerations we heard while I was pregnant with him, but there is no way to tell.
Ricky had some of the general symptoms of reflux; he spit up quit a bit, and occasionally had horrible episodes of reflux where he would scream in pain for over an hour, arching his back and fussily nursing. I realized that if my caffeine intake could affect his reflux, it was possible other foods I ate could be affecting him, too. I found a list of common allergy-causing foods in a book, and started going down it. I cut out dairy for two weeks, and saw no improvement. The next week I cut out eggs, and still saw no improvement. I became discouraged at that point and quit trying to mess with my diet. Ricky continued to spit up often and have periodic spells of painful reflux. I decided to try the rest of the list, and the next thing was tomatoes. After a week with no tomatoes, Ricky had not had any painful spells, so I decided to test it and had ketchup on my fries one day. Later that evening, Ricky started crying and arching his back. From that time on, Ricky never had another reflux spell unless I slipped up and ate a tomato product. He continued to spit up frequently, but it wasn't painful to him and he gained weight normally. I was thrilled to have found a "cure."
Ricky gradually started spitting up less and less. When he was a little over a year old, I found I could eat small amounts of tomatoes without affecting him. At 16 months old he was not bothered by anything I ate, although if he ate tomatoes he tended to start spitting up again. By about 18 months of age, he could eat tomatoes with no effect.