Mamas with babies on home O2 - question!

GatorNurse

Caroline is on 1/4 L of O2 at 100% at home, along with an apnea monitor. For one, the monitor goes off ALL the time and its NEVER her. She is very obviously breathing (either sleeping, or squriming, or grunting, etc) and its always the stupid leads. We are so over it. She HATES sleeping in the bassinet so we usually put her in the Rock & Play. But, because of the angle it puts her at, the strap with the leads on it cant read her respiratory rate bc it doesnt connect to her skin well. Or, the sticky leads pull off. I'm so irritated.

 Secondly, her nasal cannula prongs are ALWAYS out of her nose. OMG! It drives us crazy! We are constantly putting them back in all day and all night. She just slept on my chest for two hours... I lean down to lay her on the ottoman to re-swaddle her before putting her in the RNP and of course, the prongs are out. So, has she been laying there asleep with no O2 for two hours?? 

Mama needs a drink!

raches

I completely understand on both accounts.  One thing that has significantly helped us is using the chest belt for the electrodes instead of the leads.  If your oxygen company didn't give you the chest strap, you can request it.  Our NICU nurse recommended it after I mentioned we were going crazy.

 

As for the prongs coming out, no suggestions there.  Ours does that too.  I look at it as part of the weaning process.  No true alarms whole it's out means they likely aren't deepening on it.  It is annoying though! 

Dustilou

I don't have any suggestions about leads, because we don't have them. But I would request a chest strap like the pp had mentioned. As far as the prongs coming out..ugh! I cannot tell you how quickly our little Lilly yanks them out. My poor DH stood over her last night replacing them, but it's hard to keep up with. I figure she passed her room test just barely, but if I can hear her breathing, crying and grunting she must be okay for the moment, and I can replace them and not worry as much. But I cannot wait until the O2 goes away and the canual too.

My question for you is..how do you deal with the tender grips? I hate replacing them because I'm scared I'm hurting her little face . How do you change them out with your LO? 

GatorNurse

I feel the same way about the prongs. If she isn't alarming when she hasn't had the prongs in for like two freaking hours while she's sleeping & I'm sleeping, then she must be doing ok, right? lol

We do have the chest strap but she wriggles and squirms so much that she'll squirm to the point where it loosens and then it alarms because it isn't on her skin fully. We rotate them, mostly to give her skin a break. I just went to Target and got some pain-free paper tape to see if taping the leads on will help. I just don't want to irritate her poor skin even more ya know?

 As far as changing the tape on her sweet little face -- we "stole" some duoderm (given to us by a nurse, lol) from the NICU so that helps. She said if we run out, we can probably ask our pulmonologist for a Rx for it and the home health company can provide it to us. So, she's got the Duoderm, then the cannula with a Tegaderm over top. The Duoderm is nice because it comes off pretty easily when wet, so I just use a damp cloth to ease it off. But, that being said, she just straight RIPPED it off her face yesterday while eating a bottle, so it must not hurt too bad because she didnt even flinch!

Medtwin

We us ticoderm tape for the canular..its clear so looks better than 2 big brown spots on her face & it keeps the canular prongs pretty well in her nose (unless of course she pulls it out..)

we only have a pulse oxi monitor..and trust me it goes off awhile.. we really had to get the foot thing just right.. or it would go off ALL the time