Mmmm Snotty

We came back from Thanksgiving all snotty messes.

Lauren and Abigail’s noses were spewing green stuff constantly, yet both were still running around full steam like nothing was wrong.

That’s the nice thing about sick kids. It’s not too bad to deal with until they get really really sick.

Monday night Abigail got really really sick.

We just started doing nights and naps without a diaper. She’d gone 2 or 3 weeks with dry diapers, so Sunday night we went without.

On Monday night when she woke up at 2 am, we thought she just needed to go to the bathroom to keep the dry streak going. Taking her “potty” in the middle of the night is way easier than changing wet sheets.

But when she talked she was really whiny and making this weird honk-like noise when she breathed.

In our sleep-disturbed stupor we thought she was messing with us – trying to be funny or something. We told her to stop. We told her to be quiet and not wake Lauren. This of course only made her more upset.

Then all of a sudden, we realized something was wrong. She wasn’t making the noise on purpose and her breathing was labored.

We’d never experienced this before. Our child had never been in such discomfort. We didn’t recognize it for what it was.

Immediately Jen called the night nurse. We were told unless her chest was seriously heaving or her nostrils exceedingly flaring, she’d be ok until the morning. The nurse suggested a vaporizer and/or a warm shower for warm moist air.

We did both. Jen sat with her in the bathroom for 3o minutes or more with the shower running.  I got the vaporizer set up in our room.

By the time they came to bed around 3 am (we let her sleep with us, so we’d all feel better – first time for that too), she was feeling better. She was a “Chatty Kathy” by that point. Going on and on about everything (death for bugs and people, because eventually everything dies she told us) between intermittent honks.

Finally she fell asleep and we all slept peacefully the rest of the night.

Lauren in the middle of all this did her first (or 1 of a very few) eight hour stretch of sleep. She woke shortly after 4 am, at which point Jen got up (again) to nurse her. At 5:30 am Lauren was all done sleeping for one night and I got up with her for good.

Rough night to say the least.

As the day wore on, Abigail improved. Had a little set back from her nap, but being up and running seems to help. Last night we put her to bed with the vaporizer, a bigger pillow and some tylenol. Last night was a lot better as we went back to our usual up once each for Lauren routine.

Now if we could just stop getting up altogether, we’d all be in a lot better shape.

– b