So a little background info first. When we brought Devin home from the hospital we noticed he breathed a little funny. At his 2 week check up we asked the pediatrician and they said it was "periodic breathing" and would go away by 4 weeks of age. Something inside told me it was not just that but I decided to not worry about it. I figured they would just think I'm looking for problems since I had an older child with health issues.
Okay - So now forward to yesterdays pediatric appointment. We go in, get him undress, weighed and taken into a room. The nurse comes back in to recheck his respirations. I made the comment, "What did you have a hard time getting it over his loud breathing?" She immediatly gets concerned and asks if this was normal for him. I told her yes and she continues to freak out in front of me saying, "This is definintly not right." I get a little panicky cause at this point I realize his retractions are getting worse than before. So of course we wait another 15 minutes until the resident pediatrician comes in and I go over all my concerns with her. FINALLY 10 minutes later OUR pediatrician comes in.
Right away she watches him breath and says she thinks he has "laryngomalacia."
This is a picture of laryngomalacia seen during an exam.
Laryngomalacia is a softening of the tissues of the larynx (voice box) above the vocal cords. This softening causes the tissues to become floppy, and they may fall over the airway opening and partially block it. It is a common condition in infants.
So we are now being referred to a pulmonologist to see if this is indeed what Devin has. Our pedi did order chest xrays yesterday to make sure we weren't missing something.Now on top of this, I believe Devin is dealing with "silent reflux." He doesn't spit-up but you can hear/see when it's happening. I've done some research and babies with larygnomalacia have a higher chance of having reflux due to the weakened tissues. So I put a call back into our pedi today and she is getting him referred to a GI specialist as well and ordering an upper GI study.
This all being said I'm living on edge here worried that he may stop breathing when sleeping. I asked if he needed an apnea machine and the pedi said no. I guess that's a good thing...right? We have learned he sleeps/breaths better when elevated so he needs a pillow. This is the same thing I had to do with Arianna.
So please keep Devin in your prayers. We want to find out exactly what is wrong and are believing God will heal whatever it is that is wrong. We have seen first hand with Arianna that prayer works!
Well I just wanted to give an update while he was resting. I'll update when we get our appointments set up.
