OT: Baby with Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Just wanted to see if anyone had any insight on Obstructive Sleep apnea in a baby. Our 8month old FS, Dimples, had a sleep study last week because when he was 2 months old he contracted RSV and had some times where he would stop breathing. He had a followup appointment and we urged the ENT doctor to see if we could get a sleep study done. Well with lovely medicaid, it took several months to get an appointment! By this time, my hubby and I defintiely thought that it was not needed anymore, but we'll go ahead and do it, what is it gonna hurt right! Thank God we did! He was diagnosed with mild obstructive sleep apnea. I have a follow up ENT appointment on Friday. What can I expect? My father-in-law uses a CPAP, but how can we expect an 8 month old to keep that mask on all night?! TIA!!

I had 2 bio-kids with obstructive sleep apnea. Both had Tonsillectomies (one at the age of 3, the other at 22 months). In both cases, the surgery was successful, and the sleep apnea disappeared.

Awesome! I was wondering if they would do a tonsillectomy on a child so young. The respiratory therapist said he did have abnormally large adnoids and tonsils when he was hospitalized at 2 month for RSV.

I would worry about surgery on a tiny baby. My nephew had his heart repaired when he was 4 months old. (Down's Syndrome) and it was scary. But babies are very resilient and bounce back quickly. He did really well. If it's a Children's Hospital and you trust the doctor, go for it. But make sure you check out the doctor. Google his name. There are websites where you can check and see if a complaint was made against him for malpractice.

I will definitely! We'll see what the doctor says!

In my experience, most ENTs wait until the child is as big/old as they can before doing surgery, depending on how severe the apnea is. With my son, they were willing to wait until age 3, but my daughter had several episodes that necessitated operating sooner. Good luck! Surgery is so scary with these little ones.

I actually expect at such a young age they'd wait on the tonsils and may only just do the adenoids. The younger they do the tonsils the bigger the risks are (of hitting the artery and there is actually a risk of them growing back). My cousin is a nurse practitioner and we just talked about this at Christmas because her DD had her adenoids out at just over 12m old, but not her tonsils, she said they are doing a lot of adenoid only surgeries lately because of OSA. My friends daughter had OSA and they had to wait until she was bigger to do the surgery because her tonsils were so big that they needed to come out too...so the ENT actually pushed them to keep the pacifier. They said that it helps keep the airway open and stimulates the breathing reflex when they suck.

Too bad Dimples doesn't use a pacifier anymore. At around 4 months he just stopped using one. I even have tried several times since then to give him a pacifier, when he is cranky or inconsolable, but he just spits it out. I'm really curious what the ENT will decide.

This. My son had "kissing tonsils". He had over 400 desats overnight, including some into the 60's and 70's. He had his tonsils out, and everything was better afterwards. Buddy was 22 months when he had his tonsils out.

I have sleep apnea but I was so completely fatigued that I was suffering from full blown sleep deprivation (I was in bed for 8 hours and they estimated I got about 30 minutes of real sleep each night). The machine is not sexy or anything but if you stop breathing it's hard on your body and you don't need that sort of stress on your heart while you are pregnant. I'd suggest getting checked out !