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Hi everyone, and welcome to another video.

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Airway First, the podcast from the Children's Airway First Foundation.

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I'm your host, Rebecca St. James.

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My guest today is Jackie Christensen, a Danish mom who moved to the United States in 2018 with her husband.

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A Danish mom and nurse who moved to the United States in 2018 with her husband.

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We now live in Houston, Texas with their four-year-old daughter, Laura, who has been diagnosed with sleep-disordered breathing.

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In Denmark, Jackie was a registered nurse and certified health coach.

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In the U.S., she is a proud stay-at-home mom who enjoys volunteering at her daughter's school.

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I am so grateful to have Jackie on the program and appreciative that she came on to share her story.

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I think each and every parent who is going through an airway journey will be able to relate to her story in some way.

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So, without further ado, let's jump into today's episode with Jackie Christensen.

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Good morning, and thank you so much for joining us, Jackie.

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Thank you so much for having me, Rebecca.

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Yeah, and I will tell you, getting to talk to parents is actually one of my favorite.

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No offense to all of our medical people.

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Come on, but I love the parent experiences that we get to talk about because y'all are there.

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Y'all are in the trenches.

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You're the ones dealing with this day in and day out.

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So, before we get started, I just want to personally say thank you for coming on and sharing,

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because I know it's kind of scary and it's not always the easiest experience to share, so thank you.

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You're very welcome.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah, hitting it perfectly because it is also emotionally to share this with your child and yourself and your husband.

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Yeah.

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Well, I guess we're going to start from the beginning, and first of all, so that I contain myself when you say it, shout out to my hometown.

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Yeah, Houston, because that's where you are.

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Yeah.

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So, let's just go ahead and start from the beginning.

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You know, how did you find out that your daughter was dealing with this and then, as it happens in many families to you and your husband?

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Yeah.

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It's a really good place to start the conversation, I think, because it was not easy to find out.

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Right.

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Because, as you know, so many symptoms related to an airway disorder are easily missed or understood.

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Right.

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Going back to when Laura was born, you know, there was nothing directly indicating that she was suffering from this.

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She was born, you know, around her due date and I was able to breastfeed her actually exclusively until she was six months old.

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Yes, she was a bit gassy.

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Her sleep was, you know, not perfect, but you know, that's normal.

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Right, that's what you think.

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Yeah, that's what you would expect, sure.

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So, but, but, and she was also gaining weight. So the gassiness we were being told, you know, this, let's wait and see, you know, usually it results later on and it did.

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So it was really around, I would say when Laura was about one and a half years of age old, she started in daycare setting.

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Okay.

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And when she started there, she started to get sick a lot.

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She had an upper respiratory infection back to back. It was like, we were never getting a break from it.

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And soon or pretty quickly those infections, they turned into an ear infection.

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And again, that was not unusual because you feel this lot that a lot of children are normal. Yeah.

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Unfortunately, she, she had an infection and the antibiotics she was giving gave her an allergic and allergic reaction.

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So, since he didn't resolve from that infection by herself, the ENT was pretty quickly, I would say, to suggest that she should have ear tubes.

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So she had that around, I believe she was around 20 months old.

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Okay.

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And her sleep, of course, was also not perfect, you know, she was still waking up, but again, you're being told this is this is normal.

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Yeah, right. Yeah.

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So she had the ear tubes, and she continued to being sick.

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You know, very often.

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And even having trouble with the ears, even though she despite she had the ear tubes.

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And so, yeah, this was when she was about from one and a half years of age and then to two years of age.

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Okay.

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And it just continued. And after a round of group that where we ended up at the ER, I remember saying to the ER physician, you know, she's really sick a lot.

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And even the ER physician told us, you know, this is this is common or normal, you know, I would rather say, he said, and I was getting worried because her breathing it was never just like a runny nose.

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She was really sick, you know, it took a week, or maybe two weeks with high fevers and bad cough.

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And even that itself affects the sleep right.

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Right.

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Sure.

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And she was, it became more and more clear to us, oh, she would really benefit from more sleep, better sleep.

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According to what is suggested as appropriate amount of sleep. We were there.

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But she was still waking up.

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Right. So it wasn't that quality sleep that she needs. Yeah.

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And since she was waking up so frequently, we decided to take her back to our bedroom.

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Because we, we, you know, we were exhausted. My husband sure running back and forth between bedrooms.

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And then with her crib next to my side of the our bed.

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I started to notice her breathing.

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It was not severe at that time, I would say it definitely increased in severity later on.

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But he was breathing heavily, not all night.

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And some nights were probably better than others, but I started to be worried.

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And I started to address this with the ENT and asked him, what about the ad noids and tonsils.

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Because I do have the educational background as a nurse service. Hmm, there might be something here.

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But he was still a little, I would call hesitant. He still said, oh, he's still young. So let's wait.

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And having that for some time that approach, I was just, no, I can't wait more. There's something.

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And even the petition started to talk about maybe there's some asthma going on.

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So I decided together with my husband that we wanted to go for a second opinion to have at least a better evaluation of the ad noids and tonsils because we didn't have that with that ENT.

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And then you knew something was there. You were going with that mama bear gut.

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Exactly. Yeah.

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That thing about what wait and see was just waiting.

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And it was also Laura was getting, you know, she used to be a happy child.

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But she was, she was terrible even in the morning.

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And usually help to have breakfast because knowing now breakfast is giving you energy, right. So that will help a little bit and she would tear up.

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But yeah, then we had the second opinion with a new ENT.

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And she of course went through her medical history and could see how many rounds of antibiotics he had had.

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And listening to the symptoms we were describing mouth breathing, snoring, and irritable.

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And he said this is typical for a child who is not able to breathe and therefore sleep well.

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Wow.

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Yeah.

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I'm sorry, but that does my heart good that somebody, you know, thinks and sees in that way.

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Yeah.

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So, so he, he asked Salise suggested pretty quickly I would say that we should go for the surgery. Also due to her age at that time she was just about to be two and a half.

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And, and you know, sleeping and breathing well is critical for your development.

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So we, we were waiting, I think there was about two months wait time for that surgery.

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And, and during that time we had her dental appointment coming up.

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The regular checkup and her pediatric dentist. I told him about what was going to happen. And I'm sure he could already tell just from looking at me that I looked like an exhausted, tired mom from

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not just the, the, the recommended sleep that was also affecting us but also emotionally emotional. Yeah.

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Have this child that when you go out seems happy and very active.

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But as soon as he came home she was just, you know, loosening it and she was meltdowns and it was so hard to watch and be a part of

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course. Yeah, so, so he even, you know, that Dennis told me oh he had seen that he had seen other kids having that surgery and that was helping them a lot.

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And he also told me that while we were having the evaluation with him or the appointment he said, I do see that Laura has a lip tie.

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And that was new to me. I didn't know to be honest anything about lip ties. I had barely heard about tongue ties at that time.

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And it was never on my radar when Laura was an infant because I was able to breastfeed her.

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And I put on the issues.

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I was able to breastfeed her for 13 months. But he said it's not, it's not a big issue it's more like a matter of hygiene it could potentially be causing issues, but he would suggest that it was really being released by the

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ENT.

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Since he was put under general anesthesia doing that surgery to minimize his comfort.

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Would you make a referral letter to the ENT because so he knows the way this is going to go that and it was also new to me as well.

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And he did so and on the day of surgery with the ENT the ENT doctor asked me why I wanted this procedure at it. And I said it is from her Dennis to recommends this.

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And the ENT disagreed and said he didn't find it severe.

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And he would look at it but it was not something he would.

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He was likely probably to do he said, I said sure, no worries, it, you know, you're the, you're the doctor.

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Right, right.

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I trust your decision.

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So Laura had the tonsils and adenoids surgery.

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And within that month, during the recovery we started to see progress in her sleep and breathing. She was not snoring as much.

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But I was still concerned about her mouth breathing, because that was so I addressed that during the one month follow up.

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And the ENT said, let's, let's wait and see.

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We have a follow up in six months.

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And you already seen some improvements. So, so let's see.

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And it was just after I would say even within a few months after that surgery, you know, we started to see the symptoms coming back snoring.

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She was sweating excessively doing sleep.

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We live in Houston so we have AC available so right.

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It's not like it's hot we actually cooling down the house a lot for the nighttime.

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So that was not the reason for her to sweat.

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And then we had a vacation in our home country Denmark, where we were together with Laura's cousin who is at the same age.

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And it was just so clear when those two kids were waking up in the mornings, there was such a difference, you know, in the behavior and the ability to go through the day.

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And we came back to Houston after that summer and I said to my husband, there's something, you know, and then a reminder we have that lip tie.

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So, I started to look into that and I, I found a local provider here in Houston was highly qualified in doing those procedures.

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So I, I signed up for, for a consultation there.

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And there was again some wait time so now we are in the in 2022 just before Laura turned three.

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Okay.

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And then we had the evaluation and she actually showed up with a severe lip tie and what they then called a posterior tongue tie.

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And I was just like tongue tie, you know,

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been missed yeah.

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Yeah, and I didn't know what what what that meant actually.

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But they explained to me that it's not just a snip or we will just not just use the laser you need to go through.

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Due to her age we need to start therapy with a speech language pathologist with my training.

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Yeah.

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And just that word myofunctional I was like, what, what is that what is that right.

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I've never heard about it.

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So, I came back that day from the appointment.

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And I started searching myofunctional therapy look that up what is it.

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And I found a podcast with myofunctional therapist Whitney Murphy.

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And the first episode I listened to was the one with Dr. Shuin Lim.

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Yes.

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And everything in that interview or podcast was just spot on and give so many answers.

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What was happening, what had happened here.

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And it was not just about tongue tie and lip tie it was actually a matter of how her jaws are growing.

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And yeah, I've never been able to look back since then.

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And now she had today Laura is four years old, and she is.

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She had her tongue and lip tie released successfully.

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She's been doing myofunctional therapy.

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And she's now in starting to have her expanders and upper and lower expander with a spider.

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And she's sleeping.

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And I would say we already had one expander in unfortunately that broke.

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Okay.

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Yeah, so that was a bummer, but that can happen unfortunately, right?

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Yeah.

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But what I want to point out is really when we were doing the expansion with that expander, after about four weeks, by turning actively, we started to see an amazing

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improvement in all her symptoms.

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And when I really think some of the symptoms are important to mention because symptoms like bed wedding.

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Laura has not been using it.

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You know, she's been able to use the bathroom since she was two and a half years old during daytime.

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But we had never seen any dry pull ups during nighttime.

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And it hasn't been a concern due to her age. It's usually out of five, you would be concerned.

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Right.

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Just knowing about this, I was just curious to see what's going to happen when we start expansion.

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Sure.

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So that improved. And her, she was able to sleep on her back.

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Normally she would always be on her stomach.

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And she would normally toss and turn in bed waking up a force and her mood, her, her energy during day was, that's the most incredible change or that was the most incredible change to see how she was going through her day,

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getting the sleep she needed.

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And how we found out that the, the expanded was defective was the symptoms came back.

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Oh, the expanded was, was kind of like going backwards.

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So, but that's how sensitive they are, these kids, we are talking about millimeters in expanding the nasolabia cavity, cavity.

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But how much that improves their symptoms.

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And it's also symptoms like related to getting dressed, you know, having sensory issues.

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Right.

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He was able to sleep well.

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I have these.

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Part of what makes these podcasts my favorite is, you know, when you, when you start to hear the progress and this improvement and it's really hard as a mom not to cry. Yeah, you know, because this is a child that's, you know, helped, you know, she's, she's not going to end up like me, or like savvy or like all these other people running around with airway that we didn't know.

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Yeah.

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And that's such a different lease on life now she has and that's why we're here and that's what it's about and that is amazing.

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Yeah, and how does that impact you and your husband now.

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It's hard to find words.

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And it's, it's, we are so thankful that we found out because we were thinking what what else is going on without a trial.

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And even though I really feel, I feel it's hard to admit that it was the behavior that make me.

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What should I say curious about what what is going on, but it was because you know we even, I think we all have heard about the terrible to the way of.

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Sure.

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Right.

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The three major.

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They might have their place. I'm not the one to to judge that or decide that, but all I can think of when we have those issues with kids is just have you have them screened.

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You know, it only takes a pediatric sleep questionnaire to do.

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And that could be done by the pediatrician easily, in my opinion.

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And I think that's where there needs to be some changes.

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You're listening to airway first with today's guests, Jackie Christensen.

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You can find out more about the Children's Airway first foundation and our mission to fix before six on our website at Children's airway first.org.

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The staff website offers tons of great resources for both parents and medical professionals.

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Visit our parents portal clinicians corner resource center and video library to see for yourself.

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We also encourage parents to join the airway huddle our Facebook support group, which was created for parents of children with airway and sleep related issues.

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You can access the airway huddle support group at facebook.com backslash groups backslash airway huddle.

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As a reminder, this podcast and the opinions expressed here are not a medical diagnosis.

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If you suspect your child might have an airway issue, contact your pediatric airway dentist or pediatrician.

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And now, let's jump back into today's episode.

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And it's not easy because that's also a part of our journey to really also be honest about finding out about this.

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You know, it feels like it was on our own and it's yeah, agreed.

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And you, you trust your doctor, your pediatrician, you trust the ENT when you go there and it's hard to, to, you know, speak up and say, I'm not sure I agree with you.

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Because I'm not the doctor.

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Right.

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But I for sure know my child and I know there's something that triggers this.

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And you know, and kind of to that two things. And we say this all the time.

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Just like parents, you don't know what you don't know, you know, we didn't know our parents didn't know these these doctors and physicians highly qualified.

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Let me just add doctors, physicians, dentists, all of them.

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And they didn't know they weren't taught they were just as let down. So here they are, giving you what what they were taught what they believe in.

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And, you know, this is part of why we started this airway mother bear movement because there is something to that gut your gut instinct as a parent you may not know what it is, but you know something's wrong.

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We have heard it from guest after guest on here as his moms advocate and dads. I don't mean to just leave them out but it's typically the moms but advocate if you think something's wrong.

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Kind of like you do, you did. Keep asking get that second opinion.

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You know, keep advocating for your child until you figure it out.

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Yeah.

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For sure.

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Yeah.

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And I also think, you know, that, as you also know, but doing your own research, you know, and, and, and I think that's why your podcast as well is such a great resource because it's providing us with the information, but you need to have access to it you need to know what to look for.

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Right.

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So, by sharing our story and hopefully other parents as well sharing their story. That's probably what's going to move this as well because then we will see treatment that can help our and not just give us a band-aid solution.

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Like having the top, not saying that tonsils and adenoids doesn't have its place that surgery because sometimes it does open up the airway and that's enough. Right.

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Yes. Like Laura's case her adenoids, they can T describe them as huge, you know, so they were cost instruction for sure.

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But it's not, it's not just one thing, you know, there's more into it. That's just one piece of the puzzle, just like tongue ties and lip ties on piece of the puzzle.

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Right.

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And one solution is not right for every child, either. And that's something we have heard time and time again with our guests. You have to look at the child and customize whatever the treatment is going to be to them.

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And that's the main goal. And I will quote Dr. Sherri Nolan for this over and over. Let's get to the root cause. When you get there, when you get there, then you can make a difference and stop normalizing as Dr. Morales says, normal or common doesn't mean normal.

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Exactly.

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And that's what I'm saying. And that's just kind of a normal to know they don't have to be that terrible. No, sure. There's psychological stuff that goes with it that man, you throw an airway with it and you just added a gas to that fire.

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Yes. We talk and the scary thing is right now that, you know, behavioral issues, you know, it's increasing at a rate that is ADHD.

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Exactly. It's so difficult to find a really good explanation.

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Except from, let's, let's look for the airways. Let's, let's look how they are developing. And I, I guess, or I, I, I know it can be hard if this is new for someone.

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Because it can seem like too good to be true that this is actually the cause and that can affect so many aspects that you wouldn't think is related to the airway.

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But I will also say, you know, being having the background as a nurse, what is the one thing we look for in an acute situation.

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You know, you treat our patient from ABCDE, which starts the airway airways.

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And that emphasizes how critical it is to our well-being, you know, I was.

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And it makes sense that since we know it's not something we're making up that, you know, they can see from the anthropologist that our faces are shrinking and it's and it cannot be explained by the genetics only.

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No.

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It's not happening so fast that that's not accurate. But it's, and it makes sense that we are not doing, you know, we have fancy blenders and we, you know, we cook our meat so it's tender and juicy and all that.

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So we barely to just make sense that that that's a good explanation, you know, yeah.

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Yeah, and I'll tell you what, for what it's worth.

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I mean, obviously, I've experienced this firsthand. And I've been very fortunate to be able to talk to all these different luminaries and just around the world that are working so hard to change this and then the parents like you.

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You know, I've gone back.

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And just even within my family as many generations as I can that we have photographs of.

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And these are people, you know, when we go back far enough, the moms were still at home. So she was cooking and we were breastfeeding and they didn't have a lot of money so you know they were using nothing prepackaged it was all homemade and and I'm just looking at pictures of my family going,

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Are you kidding me, you can just see enough just from that.

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So to me it makes sense then when someone like Dr Boyd comes in with hairs of skull from 300 years ago I'm going well of course that looks like that because I can go back six or seven generations and see a difference.

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So genetics, you know, no, yeah, but I do understand how it runs in families because you know kind of to you and your husband, you grew up post industrial so of course it impacted you.

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Yeah, so it's not genetics but it's our surroundings that I'm telling it. Yeah.

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And to follow up on that.

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When we started to learn about this learning that mouth breathing is not a proper way to breathe, which we didn't know it's I know.

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You know, I feel embarrassed by being a healthcare professional and I didn't know. But immediately we looked at my husband because he's always been mouth breathing doing sleep.

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He's always been sleeping on either his side or his stomach with his neck extended to get air yeah.

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But he was never he's never really been snoring.

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And he's always been tired in the morning like cranky.

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I even remember when we started to live together that I, you know, I talked with his mom about us that he's so cranky in the morning.

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And she looked at me and he said, he's always been like that, even when he was a child.

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And I was like, normal, it's normal.

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It's so normal. Yeah.

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And I have an adult. He was that child also ADHD was not a thing, or at least not as common or, you know, popular disorder talked about that much when we were.

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I have a theory on that by the way when we were younger, we were told be quiet.

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Yeah, you either just told be quiet go over there, or we were always outside.

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Yeah, we knew if we were acting and saying and running around and being, you know, maybe it was there.

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Yeah, a discipline issue. That's why oh they're not exactly. That's why they're acting out.

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Yep.

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When we started to learn about this and I remember that send us from his mom that oh he's always been like that he always needed time, even when he was very, very young.

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I was just like, oh my God.

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Yeah.

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And so it didn't take us long time to kind of start to look at ourselves because again, it's not like Laura is a unicorn. It's more the opposite. It would be, you know, to find a unicorn who is not having issues.

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Exactly.

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So it was natural for us to start. Okay, what about ourselves and my husband went for in lab sleep study with Dr. Jill Simmons, he in Houston.

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Yeah, we know Dr. Simmons well.

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Yeah, wow. We feel very blessed to be close to him.

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Have had that opportunity here.

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But he can by the way, I'll put I'll put a link to Dr. Simmons. Yeah, because he has sleep labs. There's foreign Houston and there's one in Austin. So yeah, yeah, because not all sleep study is the same.

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The same. Exactly. Yep.

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But he actually first had a home study done, which was showing mild sleep apnea. I believe, you know, basically looking at the AIDS eye.

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But it was in the mild category. But since he was so symptomatic, we went in for the in-lapse study with with Dr. Jill Simmons.

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It showed that he has moderate sleep apnea with an AHI of 18, which is quite quite a difference from going from having an AHI of like five or six.

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Right. It's quite a jump.

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And it's within the same year. So, so he's, he's, he's also doing treatment and we're hoping he's actually a candidate for double jaw surgery.

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So it's really hard on him as well. And he still determined that we need to change this for for our daughter because he just thought this was how he was supposed to be.

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You know, he has a good job. You know, he's been doing well on that front. But now, for the first time, he's like, wow, this is me.

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And also for his situation, I want to mention that when we were in our twenties, we were kind of looking into something with him because he was always thirsty at night.

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He was drinking a lot of water.

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So the first thing we were thinking, oh, is this diabetes?

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Right.

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Is that what's causing him to be so thirsty and dry mouth in the morning? And he had all his vitamins checked back then. And of course check for diabetes and everything came back normal.

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And there was no concerns. So we kind of just like, okay, there's no explanation to why you're normal for him. Yeah.

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And I also think it, you know, for him, no matter if it was actually getting worse, the longer he slept, let's say he was sleeping five hours or six hours compared to when he was sleeping eight hours or nine hours.

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He woke up feeling worse with those eight or nine hours, which actually makes sense if you think of it because he's lacking on oxygen for longer time.

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He's fighting longer. Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So there's just so many answers we have gotten over the last, I would say one and a half year.

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And you're on your own airway journey, right?

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Yeah. It was, again, we had to have ourself evaluated.

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And we both went, we have an orthodontist in Houston, Dr. John Karotkin, who collaborated with Dr. Todd Schier on my piece.

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And I went in front of the evaluation together with my husband. And because the thing is, I didn't have like crooked teeth or anything.

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I actually had, I've always been told, oh, you have beautiful straight teeth and everything is looking fine. But about three years ago, I did have wisdom tooth extracted by my Danish dentist because I continued to see her twice a year since we go back there.

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But this was during the pandemic. So it was, I was starting to a point where, okay, I need to find someone over here. So I had my last appointment with her and she extracted that wisdom tooth.

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She did tell me, Jackie, I do see some wear on your front, upper front teeth.

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You have a pretty severe deep bite.

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I think it would be a good, I would suggest racist for you. I said, yeah, I can't deal with you or somebody, you know, because I live, you know, in the States now. Yeah.

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And then I, and she said, no, no, it's, it's not urgent either. So it can wait. But just so you know.

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So when we find out about this, that, you know, you shouldn't just ignore deep bite and all that I need for an evaluation myself. And turns out I also have a pretty narrow pallate or I had, I want to say.

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Yeah, yeah, because you have a Marpy.

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And that's, yeah, which is, is an expander, but with screws.

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As an adult, you can't just expand like you do in, in, right. It's, it's a harder process. And what's that been like as far as just, not just the pain, but just the emotional side of that.

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Knowing why I went in for it made a huge difference because it's, it's, it's a quality of life. It's a matter of that.

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And the, the, the, the effect of having Marpy is so, what should I say, drastic, you know, you feel so quickly, you know, after a couple, after the shoot to splits, and you open up.

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The pallet and you start to start to widen it. It's just, you can feel the increase of airflow immediately.

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What else to, you know, it's, it's so much better.

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Yeah.

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But since I still have the appliance inserted.

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It's hopefully coming out in this summer.

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And that's what we're planning for, you know, my tongue is not able to be in the right position because, because it's there. Yeah. Right.

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But airflow is so much better.

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And now we are of course working on getting back to a good occlusion.

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So that's a lot of, a lot of work.

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But I trust the process and I, I'm so happy I went in for it and it was not.

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It was really not that bad. Of course, the first week is, you have some discomfort.

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Sure.

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Because it's attached. Yeah. Yeah.

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But it's eating is probably the worst.

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But I can live with that. That's only for a limited time, right?

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Right. Now, how long have you had it so far?

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I had it inserted back in October 2023.

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Okay. Yeah. And then this is fast. If it's going to be this summer, that's really fast.

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Yeah. So, you know, it was like a couple of months of active turning the device.

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And then you have to, you know, have like a retention phase where the bone grows back in a new place.

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So yeah.

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I love listening to you talk about this because you, you clearly have done all of this research because you've got the terms and you know what to say.

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It's just, it's really impressive. I just would like to point that out.

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Yeah, I must admit it's really become my passion. And it's, that's also, you know, it's, it's all thanks to all the resources available because there's a lot of weeks of resources available to us.

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Right.

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And I think that's a lot if you don't know where to look. Yes, for sure.

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And, and that's, that's also the thing right now what I see, you know, with, I'm sure our family back in Denmark, they were thinking we were completely crazy to begin with like, that's because they live in America, you know, right.

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That's, that's where this is coming from.

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But I will say we've also done a lot to kind of educate them.

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And the problem is there that, you know, my parents are older. So reading books and English and articles is not that easy for them.

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But in Nestor's book has been translated to Danish.

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My mom has read that book. And she's just like, wow. And further, they have seen our daughter. They have seen the changes she had when, you know, when things are hard and when things are better.

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And that is like having a different child. So, so for them, you know, they live far away. So when they are here, they are here for like a couple of weeks, you know, maybe five weeks.

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So they really see how it is on a daily basis.

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And that, that was also patient. There's something that triggers this in the, in her, you know, she's, she's not a bad child, you know, right.

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Seeing is believing. And that's the thing too, right? So many of these kids, I love that you said that they're not bad kids. They're not misbehaving on purpose.

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They're little, you know, they're just, they're dealing with it. And it's just this emotional outpour.

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Yeah, they're not sleeping. Their brains aren't working the way they're supposed to.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And we have, and it's not a U.S. thing. We have over 400 million kids worldwide.

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Right now. That's just right now. There's a whole new group coming up.

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Yes.

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I, I'm in contact with people back in Denmark. And they are so frustrated because there's not a single, there's not any dentist there who can provide a tongue tribal ease even for child.

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They're not allowed or doing early expansion.

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You know, the earliest you are able is if you are, the very earliest is about eight years.

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And they, they prefer even to wait longer. And it's not in the scope of their practice to look at the airways. It's just a matter of looking at the T.

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Yeah.

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And as Dr. Boyd would say, you know, eight, nine years old, that's a geriatric child. That's, we've missed, we've fixed before six. We got to get in there.

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Yeah, but, and, and, and I think it's because people don't know why do we treat early. One thing is too, because you could have a child that is not that symptomatic, you know, they are three or four years of age, but they might still have issues, you know, that they might be

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off track with their growth and development in their jaws. But parents just see the straight teeth and, and they know spacing and they think yes.

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That's it.

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Great smile.

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But they don't know that that's the exact they don't know that's not what it's about. And I'll tell you that's why it's so important that we have these luminaries and advocates like Sharon Moore and Dr. Boyd and Dr.

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AJ and Sharon Lim that are going to World Sleep Conference that was just in Brazil before there's a conference coming up in Australia and we're all traveling around the globe.

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It's not because we all want the airline points. We're tired. We're traveling around the globe because people need to know.

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Yes.

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And we just don't know and you know you can watch kind of like you talked about the screens at birth and tongue time releases just in Brazil and you can see the stats but they didn't lie.

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It's making a difference, but you know we have to get to them and for them to know first because if you don't know.

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Yeah.

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But as you know what what what the pushback is there's not enough evidence we need the randomized studies to to kind of justify what we're doing control study.

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What who's going to study on a kid what kid are we going to say okay this kid we're not going to touch but this one we're going to.

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Yeah, that's not going to happen.

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Who wants to be the control group there. Nobody.

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No, nobody.

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And that's also you know research done by Dr. or do you and it's amazing that's what we need.

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So, yeah.

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Love that. Well, so usually at the end of an episode.

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I turn it back to the guests so that you, they can share something with the other parents, because they're the experts and I want to change that a little bit because you are the parent this time.

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So, as a parent, speaking to our parent audience.

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I would like to leave you with the last word.

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I really want to say that you need to open your mind and start learning about this because otherwise, you're, you will easily be missed in this.

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And the earlier you can help your child, the better.

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And, and you know why because, you know, the phases, the rate it develops at it, it, it, it, what should I say that gives you the answer to why we need to treat early.

393
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So, going to having resources like, like your podcast and even your website.

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That's really where we need to start parents needs to parents need to be aware. And so they can demand this treatment and they can search for this treatment.

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And so it becomes more accessible for them.

396
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Well said, well said. Thank you so much for coming on Jackie and sharing your story and please keep us updated on you and your husband and Laura.

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Thank you so much Rebecca. Thank you.

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Thanks again to today's guests, Jackie Christensen, for so candidly and openly sharing her story and each of you for listening.

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You can stay connected with the Children's Airway First Foundation by following us on Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn and YouTube.

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Don't forget to subscribe to the Airway First podcast on your favorite podcasting platform so you won't miss an upcoming episode.

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If you'd like to be a guest or have an idea for an upcoming show, shoot us a note via the contacts page on our website or send us an email directly at info at childrensairwayfirst.org.

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Today's episode was written and directed by Rebecca St. James, video editing and promotion by Ryan Drawing and guest outreach by Christy Bochinkian.

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And finally, thanks to all the parents and medical professionals out there that are working hard to help make the lives of kids around the globe just a little bit better.

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Take care, stay safe and happy breathing everyone.