So I was going to blog about how things seem to be looking up. I was going to say that I found a way to get Elijah to go to sleep in his crib out of my arms for somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour and a half. I was going to say how I used the same technique to put him to bed at 7:30 at night and how some nights he sleeps in his crib without waking until midnight or one o'clock.
But, of course, as soon as that happens, something else happens to mess it up. *sigh* Such is life. I had started doing this psuedo-swaddle that was helping him to sleep in the crib for longer stretches, at least 45 minutes at a time. Basically I would nurse him until he got sleepy, switch the boob for the pacifier, then wrap a blanket really tight around him so that when I lay him down, his arms don't go flying up and rub his face and wake himself up. And sometimes it would even keep him from waking up at the 30 minute mark. He's actually taken hour and half naps, praise Jesus. (No, seriously!) So here I was thinking "wow, what will I do with all this TIME?" I could unload the dishwasher without him screaming for me to come pick him up. I could use the bathroom without having to try for the championship award for world's fastest pee-er. I could even EXERCISE for heaven's sake and get rid of this extra 15 pounds I need to lose.
But, alas, then Monday night occurred. Monday, as you all know, was Valentine's Day. I'm not a huge V-Day person so it wasn't that big of a deal to me that Mike went out of town for work and wasn't going to be back until Wednesday night, at least no bigger a deal than it normally is. But, of course, that's the day Elijah decides to start this weird raspy, dry cough. He'd had a kind of snotty nose the past couple of mornings, but not throughout the day, he would just wake up with a stopped up nose and I would pull out that torture-device known as the booger-sucking bulb and clean his nose out while he screamed bloody murder and then everything would go back to normal. But then this cough started. It wasn't mucousy, it just sounded like he had a frog in his throat. If it had been mucousy I would have assumed he was getting a cold, but instead I didn't know what was going on.
So thinking if it got worse I would call his doctor, I went ahead and made plans to have dinner with a friend of mine and I took him with me, of course. It was a nice dinner and I got to catch up a little with my friend Jamie who I hardly ever get to see anymore. But Elijah was acting fussier than normal and still doing that cough. So when I got home and put him to bed I decided that I would call his doctor in the morning.
But then I went to bed and the nightmare began. I woke up around eleven to the sound of him crying and when I went to get him, he was wheezing like crazy. When he would cry it would get worse, to the point where he would get silent like he wasn't getting any air. And he was majorly upset. So I called Mike, but of course, the doo doo head left his phone on vibrate and wouldn't answer. So I called my mom but I guess her phone wasn't in her room or she didn't hear it. So finally I called my dad and said "What do I do? I don't want to be the looney parent who takes their kid to the ER for a cough, but he's wheezing." Dad convinced me to go to the ER because if there was something wrong, it needed to be taken care of. So I packed him up and drove to the closest one to my house--St Jo. Fortunately, it must have been a slow night because they got us right in. He got his airway suctioned out again (he hated that), he got a steroid shot (also hated that), he got chest xrays (wasn't too fond of that, either), and a breathing treatment similar to the one my brother used to have when he was a kid and had asthma.
I did finally get ahold of Mike and, of course, promptly griped at him for not having his phone on. But he said he thought I did the right thing. (We'll see if he still feels that way when we get the bill. So much for our nice tax refund.) Anyway, we got out of there around 1:00 a.m., got home by 1:30, and got to bed about 2:00. But of course he still didn't sleep very well. And he didn't sleep well the next night or the night after that. The ER said he did have a touch of pneumonia so I wasn't totally crazy. It seems very odd, though, because the next day when I took him to see his pediatrician, they said his airway sounded fine, and he hasn't really had any wheezing since. He still has a little bit of a cough but it's nowhere near as terrible sounding as it was. It makes me think I dreamed the whole thing up or I overreacted but it just really seemed like he couldn't breathe on Monday night.
I don't know. I'm not sure I'll ever really know what happened Monday night unless he's later diagnosed with asthma or something because that's really what it sounded like. No medical professionals we saw seemed to think it was asthma but I suppose they could be wrong. Anyhow, we're staying away from public places for awhile so we don't infect anyone else (although I'm still not feeling sick at all, which also makes me wonder if he was actually sick because I don't see how I could have avoided catching it from him). And we're looking forward to a nice chunk of change being demanded from us for my crazy mother visit to the ER.
I hope, however, that once he's over whatever this is, we can go back to the better sleeping. I think maybe the roids they gave him were messing with his sleep. So no more roids, okay? Unless he totally can't breathe again like before. Plus, I don't want him going into some roid rage and breaking all his toys. ;) (Just kidding, it was only 15 mg of prednisone.)
