Prayers Needed

This might be nothing, but if I've learned anything with Emma, it's this: what I usually think is nothing turns out to be something.

Emma woke up crying this morning, as she sometimes does.  But when I went to get her out of her crib,  her breathing was very catchy, shallow, and irregular.  In fact, it was so bad, I was absolutely certain that she had somehow managed to get a binky lodged in her throat - I just KNEW she was choking on something.  But she wasn't.  She was still sleepy, and when I laid her down to change her diaper, her breathing was VERY shallow.  No deep breaths at all and again, very catchy and choppy.  As she began to wake up, she was fine.

Tonight I heard her breathing irregularly through the baby monitor.  I went into her room to find her breathing pattern and frequency of breaths fighting the pattern and frequency settings on the bipap machine - she and the machine just couldn't get in synch.  She was inhaling choppy, shallow, double breaths, even though the mask is supposed to be helping, and ultimately, preventing this.  I'm so afraid that her apnea has taken a turn for the worse, but there's nothing more we can do about it than put her on a machine.  Having the Chiari decompression might help, but Troup isn't convinced that the pressure on the specific parts of her brain actually has anything to do with her apnea; it's more like just disorganized brain stem.

I'm going to go sit in her room and read a magazine, just to keep an eye on her and listen for changes in her breathing.  After all, that's how I caught the apnea when it started...maybe I'll catch something else that the doctors will know how to fix and...voila!  She'll be all better!  (I realize this is a pipe dream, but sometimes it's nice to think that maybe something about Emma will be healed one day.)  So please pray that our baby girl is not regressing all of a sudden and that God will teach her brain to breathe just like the rest of us.  We are so blessed to have Christian doctors who believe that God uses them and uses medicine to carry out His will - it's so frustrating to think that all those things are in place, and we still don't see any healing going on.  Please just pray.