No, really guess!
It was....
a brand new...
BABY MONITOR!!!!
Nope, it was not a gift for someone else who had a new baby. It was for me.
...Yes, I am completely aware that my 'baby' is 10.
So why would I buy myself a baby monitor? That's ludicrous!!!
I bought it because for part of the night it gave me the gift of sleep!
You see, each time Coby has had a reaction I would sleep with the baby monitor on, so I can listen in on him. (If it was a more severe reaction, he stayed in my room with me.) And I was using the same baby monitor I had back when Josh was born---- over 22 years ago.
That baby monitor has seen better days.
I don't know what a typical baby monitor's life is. I don't know if it's like dog years where every year it aged 7 years, but all I knew was this monitor was 22 years old, in human years, and it SUCKED. While it worked well enough for me to hear Coby if he needed me, it had constant LOUD static. I couldn't lower the volume because I needed to hear Coby, so I just heard crazy annoying static.
ALL. NIGHT. LONG.
So who the hell would order a baby monitor when their youngest is ten?
ME!!!
After so after using that static monitor 4 times within 2 weeks, I ordered a new monitor.
Yitz was confused when that package arrived. LOL.
While this princess and the pea is a horrible sleeper, (in fact Yitz likes to say if a moth flapped a wing in Europe it would wake me), Yitz though sleeps through ANYTHING. He slept through smoke alarms going off. He sleeps through loud noises. He sleeps through anything.
This reminds me of when Mikey was a newborn. I was recovering from a C-section and sleeping in a recliner downstairs in the living room (I couldn't do steps so I couldn't get upstairs to my room. And I couldn't sleep in a bed because it would require me using stomach muscles where the incisions were. The recliner was painful enough.)
Anyway each time Mikey woke up to nurse, it woke me in an instant. But not Yitz... And I was in no shape to get out of that recliner myself, walk across a room, lean over the bassinet, pick up the baby, walk him back to the recliner and sit us both down so I can feed him. BUT YITZ WASNT WAKING UP. Not if I called him. Not if I yelled. Nope. So his solution was to give me a water gun. Each time my newborn would wake up. I'd grab the water gun and continually spray Yitz in the face til he woke up. It worked like a charm. :)
So anyway Yitz easily slept through our decrepit monitor's incessant static and was clueless to how many times I kept running to Coby's room to make sure he was breathing.
Yep- I am THAT mom.
I was that mom when Coby was born, where I'd sleep with my hand on his belly to make sure he was breathing. And now more than 10 years later--- I am still running to him to make sure breathing is still happening. After all- he had dosed earlier that day, and is known for delayed reactions so I needed to check. And check again. And again. And again. And again.
To those of you who don't get it--- all I have to say is that you must never have experienced seeing your kid go through anaphylactic reactions. It is terrifying. It is traumatizing.
So I needed that baby monitor so I could hear him if he needed me. I had hoped it would be a stupid purchase and I wouldn't actually use a monitor on my 10 year old- after all in a way, that's insane!
Well since my last post 2 and a half weeks ago he had 5 more reactions.
That makes NINE reactions in just a month.
To break it down further- in just 1 week he had 3 reactions.
In the last 3 days he had 2 reactions.
So yes I've been getting a lot of use out of that brand new monitor... Unfortunately.
What is going on here?
The doctor even put Coby on extra medications to try to stop this. He is now taking zyrtec and flonaze each day but it still doesn't seem to be working and we just don't get it.
ARGH! This is so frustrating!!!
But OIT continues to remain the right decision for us.
It still comes down to his safety and freedom.
Barely a day goes by when I'm not hearing about another bad reaction.
Over New Year's an 11 year old boy DIED from the SMELL of fish cooking. Yes you read that right. DIED because someone was cooking his allergen in another room.
And there are so many people who say there is no such thing as airborne reactions.
Tell that to the parents who just buried their 11 year old.
I just can't.
https://abc7chicago.com/boy-11-dies-from-apparent-allergic-reaction-to-smell-of-cooking-fish/5006054/?fbclid=IwAR2sJnICf8wAZQPtJhLH7fkRheB_dIPhTXO5p38q9IlCiy0kYWMa0FOobNo
So yes it is frustrating that Coby is breaking out in hives so often from his (lowered) daily dose. It makes me insane, but the fact still remains that I no longer have to worry about the real world.
He continues to enjoy his freedom.
Since my last blog post (again, just 2 and a half weeks ago) thanks to OIT he----
1. Went to a New Year's party at a friend's house, with absolutely no worries, and ate whatever he wanted.
2. He tried his first Godiva chocolate.
3. We took him to a new restaurant without questioning the staff and he was able to eat whatever he wanted.
4. He had part of a Dunkin donuts muffin.
5. He got to join in the "minhag" of Chinese food on Christmas for the very first time.
6. We took him to a brand new kosher french bakery
(which had peanuts on it and peanut butter mousse in it)
So yeah there have been quite a few frustrations as of late. But do I regret doing OIT? NEVER!
We do have a call out to the doctor to try to figure this out. We are caught in a catch 22. We have
to keep giving him powder so he is completely safe in the real world from all forms of his allergen
... yet it is that powder that is causing the reactions
The 9 peanuts he eats each day he has no problem with--- but that one teaspoon powder continues to be a culprit. It is sooo frustrating because back in the summer he was able to eat FOUR teaspoons of powder every THIRD day and most of the time be fine (until his anaphylactic reaction in Montana), yet now at one- he's averaging 2 and a half reactions per week.
Disney is in just 12 days--- and I don't know what to do with dosing him. I do not trust giving him the powder each morning and heading out to a full day in the parks and having no reactions. I can't have this happen in Disney.
Stopping the powder though could hurt him too.
We really need to figure this out. And fast!
We still have some time before that though, but will he have yet another reaction tonight? Dunno. All I do know is thanks to my new baby monitor I don't have to deal with the static keeping me awake all night. And OIT still remains one of our biggest blessings.
****EDITED TO ADD, THAT AGAIN TONIGHT HE HAD SOME TYPE OF REACTION WITH BUMPS ALL OVER HIS BACK. WE ARE NOW UP TO 10. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? DOCTOR IS RELUCTANT TO LOWER HIS 1 TSP POWDER, YET SAID HE SHOULD NOT BE HAVING ANY REACTION AT ALL AT THIS POINT. HE SAID TO STAY ON THE MEDS, AND LOWER HIS ACTUAL PEANUT AMOUNT FROM 9 DOWN TO 8 AND SEE IF THAT WILL STOP THE ALLERGY CUP FROM TIPPING OVER....
It's gonna be another baby monitor night tonight after all. But hey, no static. So that's a plus!
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