Stupid Monitor

Exactly a week after we brought Emily home we had the worst night thus far. She was actually really good but her apnea monitor was not.

Nate went to go and turn it off and it started a really loud, constant beep. It wouldn't stop. We did everything that the company told us to do to turn the awful noise off but it wouldn't stop. Emily was fine. It was not making the noise because of her. It was just malfunctioning.

The monitor company has a 24 hour emergency number so we called it. No one answered but the greeting on the voice mail stated that someone would call us back in just a few minutes. Ok, no problem. This first call was at 7:30 pm.

By 9:00 the monitor was wrapped up in one of Emily's blankets and shut inside the dryer so that we could not hear the noise from upstairs. I was pissed because we had not heard back from the on call nurse for the company so I called again and left another message. All we could think about was having to stay awake all night long so that we could make sure she was still breathing. We were both exhausted and were not looking forward to forcing ourselves to stay awake.

We had heard about the Angelcare monitors that you can buy in the stores. Wal-Mart, Target, and Babies R Us all carry them. Unfortunately it was Sunday night so everything was already closed except for Wal-Mart. So Nate went in search of one hoping we could have her sleep on this instead for one night. We were mad about this too because they are not cheap.

By 11:00 there was still no call from the on call nurse. When I called yet again I did not leave a very nice message. Nate was back with no Angelcare monitor because the Wal-Marts in Richmond don't have them in the stores, only online. Our monitor was still beeping away.
We were done!

Nate went and pulled the monitor out of the dryer and started taking it apart. He could reach the piece he need to in order to get to the inside battery so he handed it over to me. I finally got to it and it was quiet. But now, we had no working monitor. We put some of the pieces back together, it was in about 5 by this point, and miraculously got it to work again. It was still in pieces, but it was working. So now we could at least make it through the night. We were still nervous though, because we were not sure how long it would continue to work.

It ended up going off 3 different times throughout the night, because Emily stopped breathing, not because it was malfunctioning. Nothing serious, but we definitely needed a working monitor. It scares me to think what could have happened if we hadn't figured out how to rig it to work for the night.

At 9:00 in the morning there was still no call from the company so I called them again. Someone answered this time as it was during their normal business hours. I explained what had happened the previous night and the nurse stated that she was the one on call last night and never received any phone calls. She said someone would come by the house to see what was wrong and give us a new monitor. I also told her she might want to try checking messages as I had left quite a few.

When the nurse from the company (a different nurse than the one I talked to) stopped by the house she told us that the situation had been investigated and that the nurse that had been on call that night had gone to church and turned off the phone. She forgot to turn it back on and check messages. She apologized for the company and gave us the owner's personal cell phone number in case anything should happen again. She also told us that they were going to be reviewing their on call policies at an upcoming meeting. She asked us for any suggestions we might have to improve this area and we gave her some ideas. She took the old monitor and gave us a new one. She had never seen one in so many pieces before. I am not exactly sure what happened to the nurse that had been on call.

We have not had any problems since then, thank goodness, and the one other time that I have had to contact the company I had a very good response from them. The company seems to be a good one, but that one nurse was very irresponsible.