Tests...tests...and more tests...

This has been a very busy month, with the holidays, work, and dr. appointments and test for Noah.  Noah has had reflux issues since he was a few months old.  He would go 12 hours without eating, scream at the site of a bottle, spit up, hiccup, gulp over and over with his eyes turning red, etc.  Our doctor tried 8+ different medications for reflux, bowel spasms, etc.  We were referred to a GI specialist at Integris who found microscopic blood in Noah's stools.  This is something I would have never been able to see.  He felt it was probably from his esophagus or a food allergy.  We changed to good start formula and were eventually weaned to only prevacid daily.  Any mother knows how difficult it can be to give a baby medicine.  It was a nightmare to give him 4-5 doses of medicine a day, so when we went to once a day I was relieved!  In September Noah's monitor went off, signaling that he had stopped breathing 15-20 seconds 4 times in one weekend.  Our doctor referred Focus Home Medical to set us up with an apnea monitor (I may have blogged about this before...bare with me, I'm am too exhausted to remember, not too concerned about blogging about it twice to check, and yet too tired to sleep right now so I will continue on...make sense?  I didn't think so).  SO back to my story, we've had this monitor since September and have had three month long studies done.  Noah did not pass the first two and we haven't received the results from the third (which they just took last Friday).  Our pediatrician believes that the Apnea may be due to his reflux and he referred us to Children's hospital for a 24 hour long ph study and a sleep study.  Yesterday morning we had to arrive in outpatient surgery services at 7:45 to get a ph probe placed in Noah's esophagus.  This was such a horrible experience, watching them restrain your child with sheets as they fail to get it placed the first time.  They finally placed the tube and glued and taped the wire to his face, looped it around his ear and ran it down his shirt.  This tube is attached to a fairly large box/monitor that is placed in a backpack...weighing about 1/2 of my child's weight and they expect him to wear this backpack????  So I am exhausted, in every way, from staying 100% alert and watching my child's every action making sure that he didn't pull this probe out.  We borrowed gramma's baby walker to help keep Noah entertained.  We also went to the mall to walk around in the stroller for another activity.  It is very hard to find things to keep a child off the floor where he can't pull away from the monitor and rip the probe out.

We had to go back to the hospital at 7:30 for a sleep study.  We had to wait an 1.5 hours later than expected to get his probe in, and then we could only feed him every 4 hours, with NOTHING in between, so this kind of threw off his schedule!  They finally got all of the 19 wires placed on him and wrapped his head to keep the electrodes intact by 9:30ish.  Noah just laid in my arms for over 30 minutes looking at me, not making a sound, just staring.  I felt so bad because I know he was so scared.  We made it through the night with only a few meltdowns.  They wouldn't let me pick him up out of the crib after they had all of the electrodes placed so it was hard to comfort him, especially since he woke up several times in a strange environment wrapped all up in tape.  I am so thankful this is over.  We won't receive the results for another 7-10 days, but I am believing that he is perfect, healthy, and whole and they will dismiss the apnea monitor!  

The tests are over!! Yay!