Croup

So, Aunt J mentioned on Wednesday she thought Peanut had a cough. I brushed it off , he often coughs. But sure enough, it got worse and worse. Last night, while watching a repeat of Craig, I heard it. The dreaded barking sound. Last March Peanut got really really sick. That included Croup, amongst other ailments. It was easily one of the worst months of my life, it still brings dark clouds overhead thinking about it. When we were getting ready for bed, I heard his door slam against the closet, how I know he's out of bed. I look out the door and he's just leaning up against the gate, taking hard ragged breaths. Not crying, just looking pitiful. I wrapped him up in my arms, we got his humidifier running better, and I hung out with him in bed , listening . He woke up a lot, my poor ill' monster. He was up at 7 and I got him propped up on the couch with the tv.  He slowly improved as I made waffles and called the nurse line and got an appt.

Gma, PGA and Uncle A came to open presents and set up his new train table. That cheered him up! We got lots of cool new presents, but he was fading fast and early, so we hurried upstairs for a naptime, he crashed soon after.

I had to wake him up around 1 so we could get to our appointment. He allowed himself to be carried the whole way, down to the car, into the office, sat on my lap during, carried out... very unlike him. Weighed in at 29lbs 5oz (fully clothed) and we saw our doctor. She agreed on my diagnosis and gave him a steroid to help his breathing. She also agreed that it sounded like he was better off gluten free. Then we headed over to grandpa's house to play a bit. He was taking Uncle A out for a fish fry and invited us, while Gma went to a snowshoeing event. Peanut tried my fish and potato... but all he wanted was cottage cheese. And he's got Gpa wrapped around his little finger, and he ordered him a second helping of it. What a decent guy ;)

He went to bed a bit after 8, I decided to put my feet up for a bit and relax after the oddity of the day. Peanut was sick, but not too sick, as long as we kept him from playing too hard, his coughing didn't seem bad, more so just low energy. But he woke up... a lot. Especially from like 930-1130ish. I was up and down the stairs over and over. Everytime he coughed. I tried staying with him, rocking him, ignoring him, sips of water, whatever, you name it, I tried it. But every time he'd cough he'd start crying and walk to the door. It got a bit less after 1130, however he developed a fever in the middle of the night. Of course in the middle of the night, it's like, maybe he's just got too many blankets? I took off his pjs, but Peanut likes clothes I guess, and he grabbed himself a new pair of pants to wear, so he wore that to bed afterwards. By morning though, we were like, yeah, ok, fever. Gave him some advil, it was 100.5, and by that point I figured he'd likely been that high for awhile and there was no point to letting it sit that high. I know lots of people say don't treat a fever unless it's super high... but the kid sadly crawled up on top of me 30 minutes after waking up and passed out. He needed it.

We did our best to quietly play and watch tv/movies. I made him cheesy chicken, and like 10 minutes before it was ready, he was letting us know he needed a nap. We held off to try to feed him, however he flat out rejected the food, and then was a complete mess for naptime. Things really just got rough for him around then. He took a short nap. I went up there when he woke up to calm him, but he was stuck between wanting to fall back asleep but being too miserable to do so. So I took him down to the TV to see if he was a little distracted if he'd nap, but that didn't work either.

Insert  fun with puking here.

We took him over to mom's for some new distractment, it worked for the first 10 minutes? He wanted papa (He's calling gpa papa now instead of bupa) to run the trains, then he tried to chase the dog... but insert some almost fun with puking and we put on the Polar Express. The poor kid wouldn't eat dinner (but did drink a cup of chocolate milk) and didn't utter a single 'choo choo' or 'all aboard' during the whole movie. While we got him ready to go home though he did have a few small bites of a cookie. Calories! We got him changed for bed and realized that he hadn't peed at all in the last 7-8 hours? That's a little scary. He went right to sleep. He woke up every 20ish minutes from like 830-1130 or something, or at least it felt like that.


The good news? Around 5AM he woke up talking :) Of course we still needed to make him go back asleep, but he didn't wake up coughing, or crying, he woke up and started talking. Hopefully now it's hit it's worst and he'll start feeling better fast!