The Monitor

When we first came home from the hospital, after doing some tests on the Count, the doctors determined that he needed to be on an apnea monitor. This is a small device that measures the heartbeat and breathing of the little man and alarms if there is a problem. As far as we can tell, there has never been a problem, but it sure is comforting to be able to place the monitor on him at night while we’re sleeping and know that if there IS a problem, we will know it and be able to react immediately.

This sounds very comforting and reasonable when you live in a controlled environment … our environment is not that controlled. This is what it actually turns into.

As the little man continued to grow, we didn’t realize that the leads needed to be adjusted to fit him better, so from time to time, the monitor would sound. I say sound and you imagine the little beep going off like you hear on the hospital television shows, beep, beep, beep. In reality I have come to the conclusion that this device was originally designed as an early warning system for air raids. It can be heard from two cities away. The national weather service actually called us and asked us to turn down the monitor because the citizens couldn’t hear the tornado warnings when they went off.

You can not hear yourself, much less the person standing next to you shouting “Hit the blue button! NO the BLUE BUTTON! HIT IT! YES HIT IT! NO NOT THAT WAY!”

Added to this wonderful little dance we would do, the bad dog would pretty much go ballistic. She BARKS and BARKS. Now this isn’t just when the thing goes off BEEEEEPPPP! When you turn the monitor on it makes a little “beep” and I swear the dog can hear it from the other side of t he house. “beep”, Woof, Woof, Woof. So you can imagine when the air raid goes off, what the bad dog’s reaction to it is, “WOOF WOOF WOOOF WOOOOF!”

Then we have Samson (the good dog). Poor thing is blind as a bat, but when something goes wrong, he’s coming to look. And if Samson is coming to check it out, there’s nothing in the world that ANYONE can do to prevent him from looking. He isn’t going to be stopped.

So here was a typical evening at our house. The wee man is getting put down to sleep, after about 2 minutes of him being down BEEEEEEEPP BEEEEEEEPPP, around the corner comes bad dog WOOOOFFF WOOOOFF WWOOOOOFFFF as I fight to get to the monitor … “JUST TURN IT OFF!!!” “WHAT????” BEEEEPPP BBEEEEEPPPP WOOOFFFF WOOOOOOFF then Samson jumps up to check everything out pushing us out of the way “NOOOO SAAAMMMMM” WOOOOFFFF “DOWN!” BEEEPPPP WOOOFFF, “I CAN’T REACH IT, MOVE SAM!” BEEEPPPP WOOOOF WOOOOF “CAN YOU UNPLUG IT?!” WOOOOOF BBBBEEEEEPPPPP “WHAT?” WOOOOF “SAM!” BEEEEPPPPPP WOOOOFFFF “UNPLUG?!” BEEEEP WOOOF BEEEEP WOOOF “NO, IT’S ON BATTERY POWER!” BEEEEEPPPP WOOOOF “IT’S ON FOR AN HOUR?!” BEEEPPP WOOOOF “SAM DOWN, NO, BATTERY!”.



This went on until we successfully got the thing to stop alarming. One night I had the bright idea to just hit the power button. As it turns out, if you just hit the power button it just ticks the thing off and you have to go through a series or 72 steps to get the thing to shut up. It’s kind of like you doing 80 down the interstate and decide to just rip the key our of the ignition to stop … doesn’t exactly work that way.

So here’s to the joys of technological advancement … I will need that technology to hear again one day.