Sick Baby

Ugghh... is there anything worse than waking up to the sound of your little boy's raspy, raw cough?  Charlie has been a little wheezy for a couple of days, but early this morning he started coughing those painful, chest coughs.  It was horrible. 

We took his temperature and it was only 100.1.  Per the book, for babies over 6 months you don't need to call the doctor until it's 100.5 or higher, so I gave him some Tylenol and we went about our morning.  He did play this morning and ate a good breakfast, but was very lethargic, frequently laying his head down, had a runny nose, and his coughs almost had him in tears a couple times. 

Since I had a dentist appointment at 9:40 (my mouth is still numb, by the way), I planned to check his temperature at 8:45 and go ahead and take him to Donna's if it hadn't gone down. Then I would see how he was doing at lunchtime.  Well, that plan lasted about 5 minutes. 

I knew via Facebook that Kate and Lakely had both gotten sick since the weekend, so I emailed Julie and Lea for the scoop on symptoms, doctors visits, prognoses, etc.  Julie called and told me that not only did  Finley have a double ear infection, but Kate went in on Monday with the same symptoms as Charlie and was put on a breathing treatment and scheduled for a follow-up Thursday to determine whether or not she has bronchiolitis.  Obviously, I immediately called the pediatrician with visions of prolonged illness in my head and got an appointment for 11:40 (first available).

After I dropped Charlie off at Donna's, it just got worse.  I came home to pump and looked up bronchiolitis in the baby book and found out that it is commonly caused by RSV, which leads to asthma in 50% of kids.  Plus, the following article was about croup and detailed the process whereby a baby's air passages can become so swollen that they stop breathing altogether!  Needless to say, I was a bit tense as I rushed off to the dentist.

I made it home just in time to pick up Charlie and find out that he'd continued coughing throughout the morning and only napped for 45 minutes.  We had a quick lunch and were off to the pediatrician.  Like any cautious (aka paranoid) mom, we stood in the middle of the waiting room to avoid touching anything.  After a short wait, I detailed Charlie's symptoms to Dr. Rodgers, while Charlie laughed and smiled flirted with the nurses.  The doctor listened to his chest, checked his ears, and gave me the news: Charlie has a cold. 

The wheezing is just in his upper air passages, and he'll likely eat a bit less than normal and more frequently, since he'll opt to breathe rather than eat.  I know what to watch out for as far as nostrils flaring, rapid breathing, etc, but bottome line: it's just a cold.

Now part of me feels borderline munchausen by proxy, but the silver lining to the whole adventure is that FedEx delivered a new batch of flu shots to the pediatrician's office just today.  I explained to Dr. Rodgers how Charlie had received his first round but was at the bottom of a very long list for the second, and we got Charlie's second round vaccine!

So I've learned two lessons today.  First, I am a bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to my baby boy, and second, sometimes it pays off to make unnecessary visits to the doctor during flu season.

Oh so sick...