Hi Toby,

I thought to reply to this thread as it sounds very similar to what happened to my DD. Like your friend, it happened twice. the first time was when we were still in hospy. leila just stopped breathing, i rolled over to check on her (she was about 2 days old) and she had gone purple. i rang the M/W and they tried shoving tubes down her throat. they didnt fit as she was pretty tiny, so they took her away to SCN. she had to stay on oxygen for 4 hours. no one told me why this happened. she was brought back and that was that.

then it happened when she was 4 weeks old. this time we were at home and she had slept an unusual amount of time. so DH went in to check on her and sure enough she was purple, not breathing and her whole body was rigid and she had white flem around her mouth. DH gave her to me while he called 000. i remembered the M/W at the hospy lying her head down in her arms and wacking her back so i did that thiniking that maybe there was an obstruction (flem etc). after about 1 minute she started oozing thick mucus, but at least started breathing (laboured). the ambos arrived in 4 minutes and took us up to the hospital. on the way there he asked how old she was and i said 4 weeks. he told me he thought so as they get many calls like ours where bubs at around this age just stop breathing. he said they rushed a little boy off earlier that evening for the same reason!!
when we were later discharged i asked the dr what happened and why. she told me rather bluntly that they dont know, so they just call it aponea to give it a name...i asked what we should do, and she told us there was nothing to do, and next time we shouldnt call the ambulance so fast. she was like "maybe wait a few minutes" (WTF?!!! my baby wasnt breathing!!!!!).
anway we decided to go to a paediatrician he checked her over and found nothing. it never happened again (to our knowledge).
but after talking to other mums around leilas age there were a couple that said that the same thing happened to them at 4 weeks....

sorry i have raged out of control with this post!
my recommendation is to get it checked out for peace of mind. hospys tend to be pretty dismissive though, so maybe a paed?