Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Croup: Our Weekend

You know you're a parent when your Valentine's festivities include a trip to Instacare, sleeping on the floor next to your little one, changing the humidifier filter, and administering steroid treatments through a nebulizer. Some weekend!

Little Miss started with a normal sounding cough Friday morning, by Friday night it was a barky cough (like a seal), and wheezing when she inhaled while crying. Plus a mild fever. We figured it was a mild case of croup.

So I slept on her floor just in case. Well, just in case turned into a long night of her waking up frequently, coughing uncontrollably, the breathing getting more labored, Ry taking her out into the cold night air all bundled to help open up her air passages, and lots of cuddles.

The next day things continued to get worse. Her voice disappeared completely (very cute, but sad), and she became very lethargic. Her breathing was labored even at resting. So we took her to Instacare. Good thing we did! We didn't know just how bad it was.

After checking her oxygen level and listening to her breathing, the diagnosis was confirmed - croup. They quickly administered a breathing treatment, which she hated, despite the cute elephant mask. It helped almost immediately.

Then some traumatic chest x-rays to check for pneumonia. I wish I had a picture of this. Little Miss was strapped into a clear plastic tube with her arms straight above her head and her legs dangling.

She didn't cry at all. She just wanted to hold hands. Such a trooper. Luckily her chest looked good.

So we were sent home with a prescription and a nebulizer. Oh, and a puppy they gave her.

After a few more treatments of the nebulizer - she is leaps and bounds better! Not totally out of the woods, but at least it's not super scary anymore.

Has anyone else dealt with croup before? What was your experience?

6 comments:

  1. cute puppy! i wish i got a dolly for going to the hospital!

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  2. When I was younger, my little sister had croup. I was home alone with her and she was having an extremely hard time breathing. I had to call 911 to help her. It was very scary! I'm sorry you had to deal with it as well.

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  3. She is so adorable and I hope she gets feeling better. There are so many things to watch out for you have little ones, it's scary!

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  4. oh no! i'm sorry to hear about your little one. i hope she gets feeling better and your worries can subside.

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  5. Fin has croup too we had to take the nebulizer with us on our trip to california we only had one really bad time with him when he were worried but the rest of the time it was just a few treatments a day and he started doing much better it's scary though.

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  6. I've never had to deal with croup, but my little guy had RSV January 2009. We had to do the nebulizer breathing treatments too. Which is really hard to do with a 4 month old. The loud noise of the machine scared him to death, so we had to wait until he was asleep. It's so sad when you know they are having a hard time breathing. I'm so sorry you had to go through all that, but I'm glad that she's doing better now.

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