Pulse-Ox

Tonight Elijah is wearing a pulse-ox on his little foot. Pulse-ox is short for pulse-oximeter; it measures a person's pulse and their oxygen saturation...hence - pulse-ox - get it? Monitors remind me of the NICU; their incessant, worry-inducing beeping was not something I hoped to relive in my lifetime. But, with that aside, I am grateful to have this device in our home for two nights.

Our pediatrician took our concerns about Elijah's night time breathing seriously and arranged for the monitor to be brought to our house. A nice man came over today and taught me how to use the pulse-ox. My only complaint? The medical supply place is scarily simliar to the cable company. I was told they would come between 9 and 1 and they showed up around 12:45. Oh well, Elijah had no therapy today, so we just hung out at home (which, honestly, is kind of nice).

Hopefully, the pulse-ox will show that Elijah is getting enough oxygen while he is sleeping. If not, then at least we'll know and we can do something about it (as to what that something is, I'm not sure).

The pulse-ox is meant to gather data. I thought that we would be listening to alarms sounding all night, but was relieved to learn that we were supposed to set the parameters really low and really high as to not set off the alarm. Good! I thought. At least we'll get some sleep!

Ha! Oh, how I now laugh at that thought. Elijah took forever to fall asleep. I don't think he was too thrilled about having some device taped to his foot. I suppose we could have done the taping after he feel asleep, but with our light sleeper I'm pretty sure it would've been impossible. I'm hoping he'll sleep through the night now. On that note, I should go to sleep. We're praying that the monitor will ease our fears and if not, that it'll give us some answers.

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