*scared me to tears*

On Thursday we put Delilah to bed as usual and hooked her up to her cardiac/apnea machine like we have every single night since she was 3 months old. This is routine now and just part of our life. We keep her swaddled in a swaddleme because first off she likes it and second to keep her hands from pulling on the cords. Usually when she wakes up in the morning we will find that she has wiggled her arms out but she rarely plays with the cord. I think mainly just because we get in there before she has a chance. So on Friday morning I heard her "talking" in her crib as she was waking up then she started to cry a little. She usually is pretty happy waking up but occasionally she will fuss so this was no big deal. I used the restroom and put my glasses on and I didn't hear her "talking" or fussing on the monitor. This was very strange since she went to bed at 8pm Thursday and it was now 8:30am Friday. She hadn't eaten during that 12hrs so I knew she wouldn't just go back to sleep so i decided to go check on her. I walked up to her crib and looked down at her and her lips were turning blue and she had rolled over twice in her crib so her cord that attached to the monitor was wrapped around her neck twice. The more she wiggled to get free the more it strangled her. I unwrapped the cord from around her neck and she began to cry again. I just held her and cried with her. This sent me right back to the first time she stopped breathing while laying on our bed. Her eyes were wide and watery, her lips were blue and her cheeks were dusky. This image will be forever seared into my mind. I'm guessing it wasn't wrapped around her neck long but it was long enough to leave a ligature mark that lasted well through the day. Once again thoughts of loosing my precious little girl flooded my mind.

She used to stop breathing a few times a week but she hasn't set off the alarm in 2 wks (since she started her new reflux medication.) I talked to Scott about this incident and we decided together that the risks of her being hooked up to the monitor at night are just too high. We have now stopped using it. This is a very hard transition for me, which I am sure you can guess for the shear fact that it is 11:45pm and I am up writing a blog! I will have to learn to not be dependent on it and just trust that she will make it through each and every night and wake up as happy to see me as I am to see her. The next few weeks will be very hard and I'm positive I will get no sleep so if you talk to me and I'm incoherent you will know why lol :)

Last night Scott took Delilah to her sleep study at Primary Children's Hospital so this will be the first night we will not be using the monitor. We will get the sleep study results back in about 3 weeks so I will be sure to update when we do.