Breathless — And Not Because of "Behavior"

“He’s just… breathless again.”

That’s how it started.

He would talk and sound like he smoked three packs a day. He’d run around the house and end up gasping. Even climbing onto the couch left him huffing. It was strange. It was constant. It was not normal.

I filmed it. I showed people. I did what moms do — I asked.
The pediatrician watched the video, handed my phone back with a tiny smile, and said:

“It sounds like he’s hyperventilating. Maybe anxiety?”

He was three.

Three-year-olds don’t hyperventilate from anxiety because they’re worried about the stock market.

But suddenly everything was “anxiety.”
Everything was “behavior.”
Everything was “sensory.”

And none of it made sense.

I pushed again.
I asked for pulmonology.

They watched the videos and said maybe, someday, when he was older, we could teach him how to breathe.

Teach. Him. How. To. Breathe.
I still don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.
So we went home — still with a breathless kid and no answers.

Then came one of the moments I can never forget

We were at his first neurology appointment for staring spells, and the doctor pulled out a pinwheel — one of those cheerful rainbow ones you stick in a garden.

“Blow on this,” he said.

He tried.
Gave it everything he had.

The pinwheel spun, slowed, stopped.
My child paused, caught his breath, and said — completely serious:

“I’m winded.”
Three years old.

Using a word even adults misuse.
Telling the doctor, in real time, what his body was doing.

And the doctor laughed.

Because who expects a toddler to say winded?
Who expects a toddler to understand breathlessness enough to name it?

They thought it was cute.

But it wasn’t cute.
It was a symptom.
And they missed it.

Then the night-time breathing episode

A few months later, I caught him on video not breathing in his sleep. Not snoring. Not restless. Just… paused.

I did what every terrifyingly awake, desperately tired mother has done:

• Bought pulse ox monitors
• Set up baby cameras even though he wasn’t a baby
• Tracked every breath
• Monitored him like a full-fledged sleep-study tech

Because nobody else was taking it seriously.

At the next appointment, the fellow took it seriously — for about five minutes — until the “official” doctor came in and said:

“If you really want to put him through a sleep study, I guess there’s no harm.
It’s a year wait list.
He looks fine and active.”

He said this while my child was passed out cold in his stroller, unresponsive to blood pressure cuffs, jostling, voices — anything.

Two days later, I read the evaluation.
“Child was alert, active, and talkative.”

Talkative.

Are you kidding me?!

He had been nearly comatose.
That was the moment whatever tiny sliver of trust I still had in the system snapped.

Where this story is really going

This isn’t about one doctor.
It isn’t about one appointment.
It’s about a pattern:

• Real symptoms being minimized
• Breathlessness treated like misbehavior
• A three-year-old’s vocabulary used against him
• Mothers labeled anxious instead of listened to

This wasn’t “anxiety.”
It wasn’t “hyperventilating.”
It wasn’t “behavior.”

It was a kid trying to say, over and over,
“I can’t breathe.”

And a system that refused to hear him.

If this hit you today, you can join me in the trenches — my weekly letter is where I share the moments between the moments.