1 Month old who stops breathing...

Im posting this on behalf of a close friend who is worrying herself sick about her 4 week old DD who has stopped breathing on 2 separate occassions.

She has one of those monitors that has an alarm go off when it doesn't detect movement after 20 seconds. The first time it happened was last Wednesday night and it happened again last night.

The paediatrician has told her that her DD has reflux, which she's now on medication for, and that that's why she has stopped breathing. She also had a viral infection which could have contributed to it as well. If it happens again, she has to go into hospital for monitoring.

My DS had reflux since he was 1 month old but like i said to my friend, if he had stopped breathing from it at any stage, i wouldn't have known as i dont have one of those monitors. But because he slept with me on really bad nights, i did notice a couple of times that he held his breath, but only realised he had been doing so when he exhaled again. I also said its quite common for them to have irregular breathing, ie rapid one minute and then slows back down again the next.

Any advice , suggestions or similar stories that i can pass onto her to help ease her mind would be greatly appreciated. She told me today that her main priority is making sure her little girl doesn't stop breathing again and that if it does happens again, she's going to wind up making herself crazy.

When she goes in to her is she breathing again? It's just i used one of those breathing monitor things and it used to go off too but DD was still breathing. Shewas either rolling off it or just breathing lighter so it didnt register. Otherwise i have no advice but a lot of sympathy. :hug:

My now almost 5 yr old son used to stop breathing due to reflux.. We had an apneo monitor on loan from the hosp but bought a angelcare when he was a couple months old..

The thing to do first is before picking baby up turn the light on and check his colour.. Mainly check his forehead. It that has a dusky colour then yes he has had some breathing issue at some recent stage..

For Isaac we used a thickener is his feeds. he as having ebm. once we started on that we never had the alarm go off again.

The first time it happened when she picked her up she took a big gasp of air after acouple of seconds. The second time she was already breathing.

She's pale when she goes into her. She's starting on infant Gaviscon tonight.

Hi, I would be getting a referal from your gp to go and see a sleep specialist,at a childrens hospital,this could leed into something serious, My husband was born premmy,but has suffered sleep apnea all his life and is on medication and a cpap machine at night time, he`s also had problems with gastric reflux all his life and it also decay`s your teeth from the acid,i think you should realy look into this very soon, good luck.

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?