At 7am this morning, I got out of bed because I heard Emma coughing over the baby monitor, and by 7:05 I was already on the phone with Michael. A lot happened in those few minutes. It is kind of a blur, or maybe my brain is already trying to erase it from my memory, although Michael says it will haunt me for a long time. I turned her milk off (Kate Farms formula feed via G-tube), which I do
every morning when she wakes up, especially when she is coughing or
gagging from a full tummy. Her foot probe monitor alarm didn't go off until I walked in, but it was still a high-ish number (87). It doesn't start beeping until it hits 88.
I don't remember exactly how she looked when I walked in, but she was laying down and didn't look good, because I immediately fumbled to switch her oxygen tubing from the regular one liter, which is connected to the air concentrator, to the tubing connected to the oxygen tank, so I could quickly crank it up to eight liters. That's as high as it can go and she needed all of it!!
I looked over and the foot probe monitor that tell us her saturations and heart rate was off! How could that have happened!? We often mention our worries of her turning purple, but her skin was more of a gray coloring. I sat her up against the back of the crib, with her big, blue bunny next to her to lean against. I patted her cheeks a bunch and yelled at her, "Emma! Wake up!" Her eyes kept closing. I grabbed the suction machine and each time I pulled the catheter back she twitched, but didn't wake up. "Not today," I whispered. "Not right before Christmas!"
I hated that everything we had practiced in the past seemed to slip my mind. I pulled Emma's limp, gray body into my arms, with her head over my shoulder, and hit her on the back a bunch of times (as if I was burping a baby), then rubbed her back really aggressively several times. I held her up in front of me and the color started coming back into her face and her eyes were open again. I quickly patted and rubbed her back some more until she was even more aware, yet still kind of out of it. But our baby girl was alive. Then I broke down crying -loudly- while holding her so tight.
After things had settled down, I noticed that her milk was still running. I guess I had accidentally turned her probe off instead of the milk. I have turned the wrong device off before when I'm in a tired panic. Once I was composed, by 7:05am, I called Michael and told him everything. By this time, Emma was really red, breathing heavy, her heart was beating fast, she looked very tired, making crying faces without actually crying.. All normal reactions for this instance. Michael was on his way to work, but turned around and came home. He arrived at 7:24 and grabbed Emma from me so he could hold her.
Her combo nebulizer was already going (Iprotropium Bromide and Albuterol liquid medicines), which attaches to her ventilator tubing. We changed her diaper, and Michael tightened her trach ties just in case. He stayed for almost an hour before leaving again for work. I'm sending him hourly updates and pictures now. Emma is sleeping again and probably will for a lot of the day, although she was already asking to sprint (breathe without the ventilator) an hour after her incident! No ma'am. I think it's an "ice cream for breakfast" kind of morning!
We usually assume that she got water down her trach, but the tubing was hanging outside of the crib slats, and that is where the water usually settles. But an hour later Michael realized that the humidifier wasn't turned back on last night after our walk (when we took the ventilator off the stand to take it outside/ on the stroller), which means there was almost no condensation in the tubing all night. So what caused her to pass out? He says it can be a really small amount of water to make her "drown". I thought maybe she coughed up a big phlegm chunk and then choked on it, because she seemed like she was trying to cough it out when I was holding her. Maybe she had a clog in her trach, and somehow me hitting her on the back moved it? We aren't sure, but we are just so glad and grateful that she is okay now. Michael gave me a really nice hug before he left and said, "Thank you for saving her."
This post is called "the second time" because the first time it happened, in February 2020, Michael found Emma unconscious since he was at home that day and I was at work. His story is a bit more scary and she was taken to the hospital via ambulance. ^^ Click the link to read about that incident. ^^
