Croup

Croup is scary. I hope my girls never ever get it again!

Right before Christmas, S had a very stuffy nose, but it wasn't bothering her too much. On Christmas, M started getting a stuffy nose too, but she was fine. Christmas night, I put her to bed and she was not going to sleep. I thought she was wired from all the excitement of the day. Then, she started crying a bit and saying that she couldn't lay down. This was weird since she usually never complains at bedtime. I kept trying to put her back down and finally brought her in my room to sleep with me.

That is when I noticed that when she was sleeping, she was having noisy breathing and she would also sometimes gasp for air. And she had a horrible "barking" cough. I had already called the nurse line earlier because during dinner a red spot appeared in her eye which freaked me out (turned out to be a broken blood vessel), so we already had an appointment scheduled for the following day. I called again though because I was worried. Nurse said it sounded like croup, and told me what to do.

First, I had to take her in the bathroom, and run a hot shower and sit in the steam for 20 minutes. Then, we had to go outside- luckily it had stopped raining- and breathe the cool, moist air. That seemed to help for a bit. I then had M laying on me as I was propped up so she could breathe better. By this time it was about 3 am. At 5 am I was very close to taking her in, but I didn't.

I got maybe 1 or 2 hours of sleep. M got about 3, if that. She was fine though during the day. Took her in to the doctor, got a dose of steroids, and she has been fine ever since! That night was so scary though. Croup is awful.