I learned maybe my most important parenting lesson within minutes of giving birth to my oldest, Scout. The nurses had just cleaned her up, checked her APGAR scores and pronounced her perfect as they laid her on my chest for the first time, her little heart beating against mine. John and I were both crying, laughing, both overcome by the tsunami of emotion that newborns ride in on, enthralled by the miracle that she was, when something dark rose up out of my gut to tap quietly at the back of my mind.
“Is her breathing ok?” I asked one of the nurses buzzing around the delivery room. She peeked over the side of the bed at Scout’s little face.
“She’s fine, honey,” she said smiling at me, patting my shoulder kindly before flitting off to finish breaking down the room. (I’ve since learned this about maternity nurses. They assume – with good reason, I think – that first time moms know nothing and worry about everything. By my fifth visit to the maternity ward, I was faced with the exact opposite presumption. I was practically treated like one of the staff.)
When my Oldest Was Born, I Felt Something Was Wrong
Later that morning, cleaned up myself, back in a proper room, staring into the face of my beautiful baby, I felt a little rush of relief when I heard familiar whistling from down past the nurses’ station. From the moment I’d found out I was pregnant, all of my pregnancy decisions – from choosing my OB to selecting my hospital to making my “birth plan” – had revolved around exactly one question: where was Dr. Barbera making rounds?
Dr. Barbera is the greatest pediatrician known to mom. He is brilliant and intuitive, practical and perceptive, compassionate, kind, and a committed teacher. He was my own pediatrician growing up and his was the first and only medical opinion I wanted, the only one I trusted to examine my baby and pronounce her well.
He breezed in on a cloud of congratulations, thin manila files under his arm, wisdom of the ages under his belt. He examined Scout thoughtfully and thoroughly before wrapping her back up and laying her in the hospital’s plastic basinet.
“She’s perfect,” he said.
“How’s her breathing?” I asked.
“Maureen, you have a beautiful, healthy little baby girl,” he said, and I exhaled deeply.
Everyone Told me she Was Fine
John and I spent the rest of the day adoring Scout, feeding her, showing her off to family and friends, insisting that the other had held her long enough and it was our turn again. Finally, I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. A friend of mine – an older mom – had advised me to send Scout to the nursery at night while I was in the hospital rather than keep her with me. “You’ll need the rest, you won’t be getting a full night’s sleep again for the foreseeable future, and you’ll never have babysitters that qualified again in your life.”
So, I asked John to wheel Scout back to the nursery. But just as he was about to leave, I called him back. I felt a little silly saying it, I absolutely trusted Dr. Barbera, but couldn’t help myself. “Tell them to make sure to watch her breathing.”
The next day, after the nursery room nurses assured me again that she was fine, we took Scout home. I remember John and I both being in a mild state of shock that the people at the hospital had sent this tiny, perfect thing home with us. What were they thinking? We didn’t know the first thing about babies or raising a child or what we were doing. And on top of that, the nagging little darkness at the base of my mind continued to flicker.
But I Couldn’t Shake the Feeling
Once we got home, as John and I began the overwhelming task of learning how to be a mom and dad, Dr. Barbera’s pronouncement seemed to be true. Scout seemed fine. She was eating fine. She was pooping fine. She was burping fine. She wasn’t running a temp or vomiting.
But she would squirm and fuss if I laid her flat, and when I had her sleep in her car seat, which I did because it was angled and she seemed more comfortable there, she would arch her head all the way back, as if trying to point her chin to the sky. And every so often, much too often, she would stop breathing.
I didn’t know what to do. I totally trusted Dr. Barbera but couldn’t quiet this sense that something was wrong. I barely put Scout down. When I did, I stared at her for hours, convinced that I needed to stay awake in case Scout stopped breathing.
I Became More and More Anxious
After two days of this, I knew she needed to be seen again. When I got to the pediatrician’s office, I learned that Dr. Barbera was away, so one of his partners examined Scout. “She’s fine,” he said, looking at me as if I clearly wasn’t. Not that he was wrong. I wasn’t sleeping. It had only been three days since a somewhat difficult delivery, so I wasn’t even physically recovered. No wonder he was more interested in me than in Scout.
“I think what you’re probably noticing is periodic breathing,” he explained. “Until about six months or so, a baby’s breathing isn’t regulated yet. They pause after a breath, sometimes for as long as ten seconds, and they might take a few short, fast huffy breaths before or after the pause. I think that’s what’s got you worried, but it’s totally normal and nothing to stress about. I think you need to get some sleep and things will look a lot better after you do.”
I was unconvinced, and by the time I got home, that flicker of concern that had been simmering in me since the delivery room had sparked into a fire. I didn’t want Scout out of my sight. I would only nap if John was holding her. For some reason, it always seemed that her breathing was worse at night and I would spend hours anxiously watching her little belly rise and fall. Breath. . . Breath. . . Breath. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Breathbreathbreathbreath. . . Breath. . . Breath.
I Began to Wonder if I Was Struggling with Some Sort of Postpartum Issue
I began videotaping her at night, hoping to prove to the doctor that whatever was going on here was not normal. I could feel it. Two days later, when we all should have been asleep, I was so worried I called the pediatrician again. It was the partner again. I told him what was going on. He said, “Are her lips blue?” Are her lips blue??? I wanted to say, if her lips were blue, dipshit, I would be at the ER not calling you!!!
Instead, in a magnificent and rarely repeated act of self-control, I said, “Do you know when Dr. Barbera will be back?”
“Monday,” he said. After he hung up, I remember thinking, Well, there’s one less person who thinks I’m sane. And in that moment, I realized that number – the number of people who were kind of doubting my grip on things – was starting to creep up. My mom, who was never one to “bother” the doctor, said I needed to stop worrying about things. John was starting to look at me crooked. Even I was beginning to wonder if this could be some sort of postpartum thing. Can childbirth bring on overwhelming anxiety? Can hormone fluctuations cause obsession? Can lack of sleep lead to full on psychosis?
Until my Doctor Really Listened to my Concerns
Monday morning, I bundled by one week old into Dr. Barbera’s office, video camera carefully tucked into the bottom of my diaper bag so I didn’t look like a complete crackpot. I mean, I love the man, but he had to pick this week to go away?
When he came into the exam room, I could tell by the sympathetic look he gave me that I must have looked like crap. I explained my tale of worry while he carefully examined Scout. When he was finished he leaned onto the edge of the examination table, crossed his arms, and looked at me seriously. Oh no, I thought, not you too.
“She looks fine,” he said. “She’s gaining weight and appears to be thriving. It’s true that periodic breathing is very common among newborns and perfectly normal.” He paused for a minute as if he was mulling something over.
“In a full-term baby, we would expect to see about 5-7% of a baby’s sleep time spent in periodic breathing. Do you think Scout is experiencing more than that?”
“Yes,” I said. “I would put it at 15-20%.” I felt fairly confident about this because I had done little else but watch her breathe for a week.
“OK,” he said, pulling out his pen to scribble something on his prescription pad. “I’m going to order a sleep study. She doesn’t have to go to the hospital. It’ll all be done at home. They’ll measure her breathing and analyze the results and we’ll know one way or the other whether this is normal.” Genius! Why didn’t his partner think of that? I could have kissed him.
His Validation Gave me the Confidence to Believe in my Instincts
It took a few days to get the test set up and whatnot, so it wasn’t until Friday that Dr. Barbera called with the results.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, “you’re right. This isn’t periodic breathing, so we need to get to the bottom of what’s going on. She’ll have to spend a few days in the hospital for tests and monitoring. You can bring her in tomorrow. . . .”
“Can I bring her in tonight?” I said. I couldn’t wait to get a monitor on Scout. I couldn’t wait to know that, if she stopped breathing, an alarm would go off and doctors would come a’ running. I was probably the happiest call of Dr. Barbera’s day.
A few days later we learned that Scout’s breathing issues were caused by gastro-esophageal reflux. Most babies with GER experience persistent and sometimes projectile vomiting, which Scout never did. In her case, the reflux surged up her esophagus just far enough that her body thought there was food in her throat and shut off her windpipe. Basically, her breath stopped for the same reason we can’t swallow and breathe at the same time: to protect her from aspirating.
And it May Have Saved my Daughter’s Life
The doctor who shared Scout’s test results told me that they had gotten an image of the actual reflux in action, which almost never happened. It was a good thing, too, he said. It gave us a definitive diagnosis of GER, and if we’d have missed that, the consequences could have been bad. GER, he told me, is associated with SIDS: sudden infant death syndrome.
Before we could bring Scout home from the hospital, John and I had to be certified in infant CPR. She came home on a clunky breathing monitor and the leads irritated her skin and her diagnosis changed everything from where she slept to my plans to return to work. But the monitor kept her safe and six months later, the crisis past, we were able to get her off it altogether.
We’ll never know for sure, of course, but it’s possible – perhaps – that insistent something flaring from somewhere inside me had saved my daughter’s life.
For a while, I secretly suspected that Dr. Barbera had ordered that sleep study, not because he really thought anything was wrong but because he wanted to make me feel better. That maybe he thought I was just as whacko as his partner did, but, kind person that he is, was trying to offer me evidence that nothing was wrong, trying to help me stop obsessing and start functioning as a mom.
Moms – All Moms – Have an Incredible Intuitive Connection with Their Children and We Need to Honor That
But Dr. Barbera told me that wasn’t his thinking at all.
“I always, always listen to moms,” he said. “They know so much more about their kids than anyone else, so much more than they even realize they know. If a mom comes to me with a concern that something’s wrong, I take it very seriously. Now,” he said, smiling and looking over the rim of his glasses at me, “they’re often wrong about what’s wrong. That’s where the medical training comes in handy. But if a mom brings me her feeling that something’s off, I look into it. Most of the time, she’s right.”
That was my first experience with mother’s intuition, and it was intense. I’ve had many since then and heard many, many stories from friends and acquaintances who’ve had the same. But it was Dr. Barbera’s validation of that experience that really helped me appreciate it for what it was: a gift that comes with being a mom. Something that only I share with my child. Something I can’t hand over to anyone else. Something that needs to be honored and respected.
If you’ve never had the privilege of hearing it from the man himself, I pass along Dr. Barbera’s validation to you. Momming is tough, and we’re all desperate to do it well. You can’t know everything, and you won’t be right about everything, but you and your child share a bond that is entirely your own. One that arcs between you on a spiritual level. It is a tool that needs to be sharpened and trusted. It will show up when you need it and, when it does, have the courage of conviction to fight for its place at the table.