Some people mistakenly think that a child over a certain age can’t get croup. Truth is, even adults can get croup; the biggest difference is that our airways are bigger so it doesn’t affect us as badly. To adults and older children it comes on like a bad cold.
Alexis has pretty much reached that point, as far as I can tell. She might have a bit of trouble for a night or more, but it’s not that “seal-bark” cough that you usually hear with croup. Even Desta seems to not get hit by these things very hard but to just get a rather icky cold instead. Actually, Eli – the one who came home to us with pneumonia – seems not too terribly prone to respiratory ailments and hasn’t had worse than a cold (maybe with ear infections) since that first bout of illness. But the same is not true of the two middle blondies.
So last night found Joel holding Branwen upright on his side of the bed and me holding Charis on mine while we waited for the hot, running shower in the bathroom to get the room nice and steamy. We caught Branwen’s right after she started having trouble breathing, and she had gotten albuterol treatments before bed for a little wheezing, so it didn’t take too long to get hers settled down. Charis, on the other hand, was so tired and felt so awful that she just wouldn’t stop crying. Between the croup and the crying, she was coughing and choking and gagging non-stop, the poor baby. I lost track of how long it took to get her settled. I do know that it was after I promised her she could stay in bed with me for the night. (As I was holding her and she was sobbing, we kept having the following exchange: “*sob* Mommy!” “What honey?” “I want you!” “Um… I’m holding you, honey…”) Even after we got her settled, she woke up several times in the night. I was glad we kept her with us, because if we had put her back in her own bed I would have laid awake worrying that she couldn’t breathe. As it was, I could keep a closer eye on her.
I’ll have to keep an ear out for ideas of how to calm an uncontrollably sobbing toddler. It was killing me to know that if I could just get her to stop crying, her coughing and hacking would settle down. You’d think, having five small children, that I would have all kinds of tricks up my sleeve. Well, I do have a few, but none of them worked. I think the moment I knew that nothing I was doing was really making a difference was when we were sitting together in the steamy bathroom and I was trying to sing quietly to her. This always seemed to calm my other children. I finished one song and had just started another when Charis, mid-sob, interrupted me.
“*sob* Mommy!”
“What honey?”
“*sob* Don’t do that again!”
*sigh* Everyone’s a critic!
2 responses so far ↓
1 Kelsey L. // Apr 16, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I’m praying you all have a better night tonight, Andi! Glad you’re able to keep your sense of humor, even running on very little sleep. 🙂
2 Chrissy // Apr 17, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Ha! My mother-in-law always tells the story of how Kurt loved for her to sing to him, but Renee (his lil sis) told her very early on “Mommy! No sing!” Renee says, “she’ll never let me live that down. ”
My kids still tolerate my singing (except the cat-kid, Major, who circles me and complains). One notable caveat: Gideon is very particular about what I sing, putting his little hands over my mouth and saying “no!” until I hit the right tune, which, I’m a little reluctant to say, is usually Guns ‘n Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine.” Well, whatever works, no?