Increasing AHI postpartum

[Berks]

Hi there!

I've been using CPAP since I was diagnosed in January 2018. It's been working great for me. A difficult transition and a pain in the ass but effective and my AHI has been low. I'm 14 days postpartum and I've noticed my AHI has gotten higher since I got home from the hospital. Granted I know everything about my sleep right now is messed up with waking up to nurse the baby and I'm sure my changing hormones influence my sleep in some way I don't fully understand. My AHI is still just fine (last night was 1.24)... But it's not as good as it was (average .35 over the last year) and I want to have the little sleep I get right now to be the best sleep possible. I want to be proactive since I'm sure my untreated apnea contributed to me having such a hard time after my first was born a few years ago and I want to be doing everything I can to practice good self care this time around.

Any thoughts on why it might be higher than normal or what I can do to improve it?

[Pugsy]

Congratulations on the new baby.

As for the AHI...my guess is that you are very likely seeing some awake breathing irregularities flagged by mistake.
We know you aren't sleeping so great and very likely spending more time awake with the mask and machine on. This will greatly increase the chance of false positives being flagged.
If you want to take the time to go look at each event to see if it looks like you were asleep or not....the videos here will help you understand what you are seeing.
http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software
If they are false positives then they are a symptom of the poor sleep and not the cause of the poor sleep and the only way to fix them is to improve the sleep quality so not so many awakenings....which is obviously impossible right now with the new baby.

[Berks]

Here's last night's sleepyhead chart...

[Berks]

And here are some of the events up close...

[Pugsy]

The flagged events that you see preceded by a big gulp of air probably are arousal/awake related.

The OA at 23:21:00....maybe asleep...the rest of them all look like arousal related to me...even that second one after the 23:21:00 flagged event. If the first one was real...I think it still may have caused an arousal.

The central at 21:07:40....big gulp of air prior to it....but looks like asleep. My guess is you turned over in bed and took a bigger breath right before the start of the turning over and held your breath briefly while turning.
So arousal related...you may or may not remember these very brief arousals.

If these were my reports I would chalk it up to new baby and the increased arousals you are obviously going to have.
Even if they were real....not enough of them to worry about though and certainly not enough to try to fix especially when tweaking the machine is unlikely going to do much. Machine tweaks might deal with the real ones but won't do a thing for the arousal/awake related events.

[ChicagoGranny]

Here's last night's sleepyhead chart...

Click on the Events tab, and you will get a list of the type, time and length of each event. Click on an event, and it will zoom in on that position in the graph.

My AHI is still just fine (last night was 1.24)... But it's not as good as it was (average .35 over the last year)

Have you always been an overachiever?

[zonker]

Here's last night's sleepyhead chart...

Click on the Events tab, and you will get a list of the type, time and length of each event. Click on an event, and it will zoom in on that position in the graph.

My AHI is still just fine (last night was 1.24)... But it's not as good as it was (average .35 over the last year)

Have you always been an overachiever?

not necessarily an overachiever. i can feel the difference in my sleep between the 1.24 and .35 she reports.

[Berks]

Thanks Pugsy... I'll keep an eye on them but chalk it up to crappy postpartum sleep I have little control over. And hope it improves back to what it was as soon as is reasonable.

And ChicagoGranny - I am but this is more about me being desperate to create a better postpartum experience than I had last time and at this stage that means making every wink of sleep I get as good as possible.

[ChicagoGranny]

i can feel the difference in my sleep between the 1.24 and .35 she reports.

Bet you can't in a blind test.

[zonker]

i can feel the difference in my sleep between the 1.24 and .35 she reports.

Bet you can't in a blind test.

that's prolly true.

[katestyles]

I read this title as

Re: Increasing AHI postmortem

Congratulations on the new baby!

(I need new glasses!)

[jimbud]

I read this title as

Re: Increasing AHI postmortem

Congratulations on the new baby!

(I need new glasses!)

This is my lucky day.
Second big laugh of the day.
JPB

[ChicagoGranny]

Increasing AHI postmortem

One long one.

Very long.

[zonker]

I read this title as

Re: Increasing AHI postmortem

Congratulations on the new baby!

(I need new glasses!)

most likely it would be Dead Wake Junk.