What were you doing at 2:30 this morning?

I was getting myself and Eli dressed for a trip to the ER..... Let me just say now that I am totally over croup. Did you hear me? Totally.over.croup. This poor child has had croup more times than any child should have to deal with it. He doesn't just get a mild case of it, he gets it bad. He had it the first time when he was about 11 months old and in the 13 months since then he's probably had it 15 times to some degree or another. Most of the time though, it's really bad.

He had a bit of a runny nose on Thursday (and that's usually all the warning we get) and about midnight Thursday night he started the tell-tale barking cough. UGH. I gave him some juice, propped him up on his pillows and prayed it was just a fluke. Nope. He very quickly got much worse. So, off to the steamy bathroom we went. Did I mention that it's about a gazillion degrees out and we don't have a/c, yeah, and we're going to steam up the bathroom with the shower running full hot, oh, and I'm 28 weeks pregnant and hot enough anyway...... The things we do for our kids! 10 minutes in the steamy bathroom did nothing but make me feel like passing out and Eli cry because he was hot. So, we went back to bed and I prayed some more.

After more coughing and gasping I remembered the dr. gave me a nebulizer a couple of months ago!!! However, I didn't have any saline solution for it so I just used the Albuterol asthma medicine in it. Really, we were just looking for cool mist (croup is typically more common in the winter and we just bundle up and go sit out on the porch for a while to get the cold air in the trachea) and short of actually climbing in the freezer, there is NO cool air right now. The nebulizer helped quite a bit and he was able to get back to sleep around 4:00 - but still got up at the normal 6:30.

He was OK (not great - but OK) during the day Friday so I had hoped he would be ok last night, too. WRONG. He was worse and the steamy shower and nebulizer didn't help at all the the poor kid just couldn't sleep. Soooo, we got ready and went to the ER for a steroid shot (to calm the inflamation in his trachea and larynx). I really didn't want to go to the ER with it being a holiday and all. I figured it would be full of all the stupid ridiculous people who had injured themselves while setting off illegal fireworks, so I was pleasantly surprised when we were the only ones there when I arrived. They saw Eli immediately, gave him his shot and we were on our way home within a half hour of arriving (and I got saline solutin for the nebulizer for future use)! All total, we were only gone an hour and 20 minutes (that includes 20ish minutes of drive time each way)......

I got him back in bed a little after 4:00 and he slept until 7. Thankfully, after I stripped his bed because somehow he'd wet his bed and his shorts and his pullup was totally full even though I'd changed him while he was up..... Michael was gracious enough to let me go back to bed (because I felt very ill, dizzy, woozy, etc. from lack of sleep) and I slept until nearly TEN O'CLOCK!!! Yay, for great hubbies!

He has felt much better today and been able to breathe better and had less runny nose and cough. He's been asleep for about 2 hours now and I haven't heard a peep out of him. Praying that he'll rest peacefully for the remainder of the night.

Whew, that ended up being a long story.....