When Joshua was around 3 months old, our pediatrician told us he probably had mild reflux (just from some symptoms we described). We would make sure he was sitting up after eating, etc. and he didn’t seem to have too many problems. Around 6 months, sometimes when sleeping, he started having breathing episodes. They sounded like when a child cries hard then trys to catch their breath. These would last anywhere from minutes to hours. Of course this concerned us so we took him to his pediatrician who referred us to a pulmonary/sleep specialist (fortunately we video taped one of the episodes).
We were given a pulse oximeter for Joshua to wear whenever he was sleeping so we could monitor his O2 stats if he had a breathing episode. Even during the episodes his O2 was at 98-100%.
Next he had a sleep study which was inconclusive. Following that, he was on an apnea monitor – which again was inconclusive. 2 more sleep studies were attempted but more or less ended up in disaster when they attempted to start CPAP.
At that point, since it appeared he was growing/developing normally, the specialist decided to end testing and just observe/examine him every 3 months.
We went back yesterday – Joshua is now 15 months old – everything looked fine. We again questioned the Dr. who admitted he wasn’t sure what was causing the breathing episodes – Central Apnea, Obstructive Apnea – even Reflux. He agreed to put Joshua on Ranitidine Syrup (Zantac) – 1 ML twice a day.
Could these breathing episodes be related to Reflux? Anyone every heard of a child breathing like this before?
Thanks in advance.
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thanks for answering! I don’t mean to be the only one answering around here
