Fear

Last night, I was the most scared than I likely have been in my entire life. Ryan woke up for a feeding with his normal quiet babbling in his bassinet. I turned on the light and went and got him. I set him down on the bed in between me and Trisha and laid down next to him. The weight of my shifting body put his head a little below his body, and exactly at that moment he spit up a very tiny amount and breathed in or hiccuped. He started choking again. Ugh.. I hate it so much. Trisha ran and got the sucker thing while I was trying to keep him calm and his airway open. He was crying, so I knew he was breathing, but he was struggling. He would try to swallow it down, but it was mucusy so it was hard for him to swallow. It would build in his mouth a bit and then he'd cry and breathe more in. I started sucking out all the stuff with the bulb sucker, but I wasn't getting very much, and it made him cry even harder when I would do it. He was inconsolable and I was ready to call 911 or drive him to the ER because he was getting so red in the face and it wasn't getting better. I decided to call my mom (Thanks Mom!) to see if she had any suggestions. She told me to continue sucking the stuff out and he should work it out. I decided that him crying harder was ok if I could get more mucus out. I got out a little more, still not a ton in there, which I think helped.
What it took was feeding him so he had something to push the mucus that his lungs were producing down to his tummy. That did the trick.
He ate for a few minutes and then fell asleep with no other problems.

Trisha and I just sat there afterwards and talked about what we needed to do if it happened again and we talked about how much we love Ryan and it would absolutely devastate us if something happened to him. I spent an hour or so looking up things online to see what could be causing the problem and what other people have done to help the situation. There are a couple things that were prominent (acid reflux, cow milk in the mother's diet, cold/pneumonia, etc.), but none of them seem to match how it happens to Ryan. I guess that it just happens occasionally. It just scares me to death. Our biggest fear is that it will happen in his sleep one night and we won't wake up from his crying. I know that I would wake up, because I wake up to his little wiggles and moaning when he's hungry. But what if he didn't cry very loud, or what if he couldn't cry at all?

Parenthood is stressful! I never thought that I could care for a child so much. I would do anything to protect him. I just hope that this isn't an ongoing issue, cuz it freaks me out so bad. Ugh...