My 2 year old has strange breathing patterns while sleeping.  She takes a deep breath, followed by a more shallow breath, followed by up to 10 seconds of apnea.  This continues in a pattern.  There is no movement, no snoring, no strugling to breathe, nothing.  She goes in and out of this pattern, numerous times per night.  Moving her does not cause her to breath normally.  I took her to the pediatrician along with a video of her doing it.  At first he was going to send her to a pediatric pulmonologist for a sleep study, but when he watched the video, he was convinced that it was just a normal breathing pattern for her.  It is too strange, I am a nurse and seeing someone not take a breath for 10 seconds, or only 4 breaths per minute is not right to me.  He did a Sao2 monitor for 2 nights.  In 16 hours she only dropped below 90%, .1% of the time.  But she was constantly desatting from 98% down to 90 to 93% for anywhere from 4-12 seconds.  It is terrifying.  The doctor says it is okay since it is only below 90% for 0.1% of the time.  I am going to call Valley childrens on Monday and make an appointment for a pediatric pulmonologist.  Does anyone have any advice or thoughts?  Am I crazy?  I keep seeing all this stuff about central apnea and brain tumors.  I am really worried.  
Thank you for any help,
Jen

Hi jen
have the doc mentioned something called Periodic breathing?
this is common is babies and young children to an extent. u will probably find some adults do it to.

Matthew has severe periodic breathing along with central apnoeas and others.

reading those saturation monitoring and our past experience hopsitals like saturation to be above 92% however drops to 90% is normal in anyone when they sleep. Mathhew has had drops to 82% during a sleep study and 87% when being moniotred on the ward during one of his episodes.

here is a good webiste to read about periodic breathing.

http://www.childsdoc.org/fall96/sheldon/sleepdis.asp   it has alot of useful info

if u feel what ur daughter is doing is not normal then seek another opinion, we got told that matthew bretahing pattern was ok and 2 months later had a sleep study along with other tests and found out he did have central sleep apnoea so doctors can get it wrong (however this was our local small hospital who dont deal with apnoeas on a regular basis so)

good luck in finding out answers

Nat

That site was very informative.  Sounds like the periodic breathing, but it happens so frequently.  I am going to call tomorrow for an appointment.  Thanks for the ino.
Jen