Grateful for the gospel

Brynlee only wakes up once in the night and it is always around 5 am. So she woke up around 5 am on Monday morning, the day after she was blessed (Aug 4) and I fed her and fell asleep with her in my arms. ( I was mostly sitting up) She was laying on my arm on her side facing me. I heard this voice that said "open your eyes!" I opened my eyes and she was completely blueish gray, but her eyes were wide open (which they never are). I yelled at Ben that something is wrong and that she wasn't breathing. I picked her up thinking that would jolt her enough to start breathing and she didn't. Bubbles started coming out of her mouth. I recognized this from working in the NICU when a baby was in respiratory distress. I rubbed her back to try and make her cry, but nothing. Ben took her and was pounding her back to stimulate her so she would take a breath..nothing. I just kept wiping the bubbles away thinking I should call 911, but I just sat there stunned. Ben was yelling her name and hitting her back. I told him to open her jammies so I could see her chest. She was retracting. (that is when the chest in concaved in around the ribs.) Ben finally tipped her upside down and hit her back again and she took a small breath enough to get some color back in her face. She never did take a big breath. She just kept taking small little breaths. I was so freaked out. Both ben and I figured that she had spit up and aspirated it into her lungs. luckily Aiden had his 3 year old checkup that morning so we took her in as well.

The doctor thought that it was because she had acid reflux and that is what caused the severe apnea spell. He wanted to put her in the hospital that day. I was for it except for ben said that we should try the medicine first (zantac). i was afraid that she would have another episode and I wouldn't be around. The doctor said that if it didn't get better in a couple days to let him know. He told us not to let her out of our sight. So we took shifts sleeping. The next day I went to Ogden to my mom's. She had 6 small episodes that day. My mom had to stimulate her twice because I was freaking out and couldn't get her to breathe by myself. I had reached my breaking point by then. I should have called the doctor that day, but I didn't. On Wednesday, she had another small episode while I was changing her diaper. I had ben call the doctor's office. It was our doctor's day off so we had them leave him a message. An hour or so later the doctor called our house himself and talked to ben and then he called my cell phone to talk to me because I had ran to the store to get some shampoo. He said he wanted to admit her that day and he debated on whether to admit her on Monday. So she was admitted to Logan Hospital and tortured as they always are. He ran every test to see if she had an infection or something. He did a chest x-ray to make sure the aspiration episode didn't cause pneumonia. He even did a urinalysis on her urine with a catheter and of course a bunch of blood work. Everything was okay except she had a de-stating episode right in front of the doctor.. so he actually saw her stats drop when she refluxed. I am glad he saw what I was talking about.

I felt at ease to know that she was hooked up to monitors. The tests started coming back weird. little things started showing up. There was a spot on her lung on the chest x-ray, but the doctor thought it might be because she didn't take a deep enough breath, so he redid that test. Then the urinalysis showed leukocytes, so he cultured that. The normal blood work came back okay. He was going to discharge us on Thursday, but the nurse came in and said that an infection was growing in the blood culture and we had to stay. The doctor wasn't sure if the lab had contaminated the blood or not so he wanted to be safe. It didn't make any sense to him because she didn't show any signs of an infection. No fever nothing. So the next morning I asked him what bacteria was growing and he said strep. I was really concerned because I know that if strep is found in your blood then that is serious. He said that he wanted to redo that test as well. This time when they drew her blood she did not even move or cry. we both had had it.

Needless to say, we find out Monday what the culture grew this time. I have such a strong testimony of the holy ghost. If I had not listened to that voice, I would not have my baby here. She probably would have died. That really is the first time that type of inspiration has happened to me. I am so grateful for it. I can't tell you enough how much I love this gospel and everything that it does for us in our lives. I really feel that things happen for a reason. I feel that this happened to us to strengthen my testimony of the holy ghost. I never have received a prompting like that in my life, nor have I received any little promptings that I can think of, so my testimony of the holy ghost has not been very strong. It is interesting how the lord works sometimes. If the lord wanted to take my baby, he would have and the holy ghost would not have told me to open my eyes that morning. I don't think I could have survived if I hadn't listened to that prompting to open my eyes. I would die if I lost my kids. They are here to teach me so much just as I am here to teach them.

She has had small reflux episodes that make her do the same thing the doctor saw, but she has not turned blue...she just gasps and takes a huge scary breath. I have been paranoid and nervous because Ben has worked doubles all weekend, which means he is gone all night until 7 am. I want to have her on a home monitor just to ease my mind again. I am glad that nothing worse happened and I feel that everything will be okay. We just have to get the situation under control.