I burst into her room at 4:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon after staring at her on the Dropcam and seeing no movement as her brother spent the better half of thirty minutes yelling loudly, slamming doors and playing around upstairs. Classifying my kids, Benjamin is the heavier sleeper and she's the lighter. She is almost always awake by 3:30 p.m. and nearly always because of the noises from her big brother. Friday, she wasn't even flinching and this noise-making session went on for 1/2 hour. I ran into my room to grab the AngelCare parent unit before I made the decision to storm her door, but it wasn't charged. I was convinced I had forgotten to turn it on or it had malfunctioned.
Instead of heading downstairs for the second unit, I had to get in there. I ran in and immediately rolled her over. She was on her stomach in the same position she was when I left the room at 1:00 p.m. I knew that from the Dropcam. I immediately felt warmth, but didn't trust it. Finally, she moved. She was zonked. But alive. Of course she was alive. She is 13 months and the majority of babies who make it this far are alive. Then she cried the cry of a baby who was pretty pissed I'd just woken her up from a deep sleep.
But that PTSD? Came right back in like it had never left.
I put the most recent story of SIDS I've been editing for Faces of Loss to blame for this one. Sometimes I just can't shake the fears that are clearly still harboring in my bones from losing Andrew. There's nothing I can change, and yet, I spent the greater part of an hour after that literally shaking.
And smothering my kids with kisses.
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Oh Mama, I hate those moments of terror. I still have them sometimes and it really does leave me shaking. Big hugs for rainbows all around!
Ugh. I'm so sorry you experienced that panic (again). I sometimes have thoughts of "what if" -not like a panic, but more of a really bad daydream, and then I have to force myself to think of something else or I worry I'm giving myself a premonition.
Sometimes I think the ptsd will never go away. So scary to even think it could have happened again.
Yes. I confess that FOL has reawakened some of that stuff for me, too. It's just so hard when everyone's worse nightmare is in the realm of our REALITY. You just can't undo that anxiety--therapy, logical thinking, and all that stuff helps, but fear still grips us. Even David (always more pragmatic than I am) admitted the other day when Coco had an unusually long nap and I kept going up to check on her that he was bracing himself to hear me scream.
Oh brandy, that sounds terrifying.
We had to get rid of the sensor pad over the late summer last year. I didn't know about the double sensor option. But it was so hard to hear that thing go off at night, and have it wake Theo (while he was sleeping a long stretch of course, and that damn thing ruined our RARE - should have been - good nights). He kept rolling to the top corners, snug and breathing against the side rather then the rise and fall of the chest into/on top of the mattress. It was a huge grief trigger. I'll never forget those nights. And he was always ok, obviously, he was 16+ months!' But we had to get rid of it to let us sleep. And with the drop cam, I figured I'd be checking it regularly even at night.
Well...just when you think you have no fear left...
The other night, when my sister was over, someone turned off a switch that controls the power bar that our modem is connected to. I went to bed at 12:30 am and saw that the cameras status was "connection lost". I went to bed anyway, confident the nest company would work out it's issues and I'd get a visual soon enough. Theo went to bed at 9. (He's been up every night at least once for the past 2-3 months. We haven't had a "good night" in a while). I woke at 4:30 am. The angle care was picking up sounds. Not Theo's voice though. I tried to refresh the camera. Nothing. No connection. I waited. I woke Daniel, I was so worried. "He hasn't woken up..it's been 7 1/2 hours. He hasn't made a sound...the camera..I can't see him! Don't you think he's ok??" Daniel, disoriented and a little worried says, "yeah...should be". I lay down. I try not to "GO THERE", but it's useless. I was so pissed off that the ONE NIGHT theo could possibly sleep until morning, the connection was lost and I'm convinced he's dead. I walked myself down that dark train of thought thinking that noise I heard on the monitor was his struggling. There was a blanket in his crib, and I was sure he was suffocating. I got out of bed, and like a ninja, walked to his room trying to to creek the floors. Opened his door and listened for breathing. I couldn't hear a thing over the fan. I walked to his crib to see him on his back, arms above his head. I was willing my eyes to adjust to the dark to see the rise and fall of his chest. I couldn't. Oh god, I thought, what's happening?!! I placed my hand lightly on his chest. And there it was. Breathing. Alive and well.
At almost 22 months, I'm sure he'll die suddenly in his sleep without warning.
This is a tough life we live. No joke.
That is so scary. Even at nearly 3 years old, I still get nervous and storm Avery's door if she's been napping for 3+ hours without a peep (she should get up at that time anyway) but the fear is real. I want to get the Snuza monitor for the next baby, the idea of false positives freaking me out all the time makes me scared. But you never know how anything really works until you really start using it.
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