It’s not your fault. You come to the bedside often and there isn’t a lot to do while your infant is asleep. There are only so many games, news and social media posts to keep your attention and let’s face it the monitor attached to your infant is a big distraction.

Typically, babies will have their blood oxygen saturation monitored along with their heart rate and respiratory rate. Some babies will have other physiological parameters monitored such as the amount of exhaled carbon dioxide or the blood flowing through their brain (near infrared spectroscopy) but the first three are the most common.

What you need to understand about these monitors is that we set alarms for when we need to know if there is a problem. What you also need to understand is that these alarms while necessary so we know when a baby is in trouble, can also drive you crazy. Parents may become slaves to the monitor where they spend a great deal of the day staring at ever changing numbers. If your infant is a “swinger” meaning that for example their heart rate or oxygen saturation tends to fluctuate a lot this can mean a lot of noise all day long.

One of the things that influences the result on the monitor is something called the averaging time. Typically for us this is 8 seconds which means that the number at any given time being shown is not the number for that second but represents the average number over the last 8 seconds. Sometimes your infant will be referred for a special test called a sleep study to closely monitor their apneic events. Sometimes families are shocked when their infant who seemed to have one or two events a day suddenly is reported as having 30. That is likely because the sophisticated lab is using a 2 or 4 second averaging time. Your baby in this case hasn’t changed. The monitor has.
Some of the things that can be asked of the team when you have a baby with frequent events are trying to rule out causes of these alarms that are not due to your child themselves.
Is the nasogastric tube in the right place? Should it be changed if your infant’s problem is mostly low heart rate?
Could it be that the probe being used to measure oxygen saturation is in need of being changed to a different limb or altogether a new probe used?
Typically low heart rate limits are set to 100 BPM. Strictly speaking many would consider this bradycardia but another definition is having a heart rate that is >20% below a baby’s baseline. Some babies are born with a heart rate that is anywhere from 100-110 (normal is usually 120-160). Twenty percent below that could be 80 beats per minute. Should the alarm be lowered to that number from 100? If so many of these alarms will vanish.

Stop Thinking About The Day To Day

Lastly, I would encourage you to try and look at your baby’s progress every few days. The journey through the NICU has many ups and downs. It really is no different than a figure showing the stock market over the last many years. Individual days have their ups and downs but it is the trend over many days that matters. Try not to let the daily events ruin your day. Take a moment and ask your nurse to see how your baby is today compared to a few days or a week earlier. You might be reminded that a week earlier your baby was on CPAP and now is on room air. Overall if they are better try and let that balance out your thoughts and try to not stare at the monitor. It just might drive you crazy.