Concerned, Panicked, Relieved, Annoyed

Jett started daycare on November 1st and by the end of the following week, had come down with his first real cold. We both did. That cold lingered for about three weeks, disrupting the very precious sleep routine we'd established for the one, golden week when he'd just turned 12 weeks and had slept through the night six days in a row. We're back to three hours at a time...if that.

So after being sick for three weeks and missing a week or two already of daycare, this cold developed into bronchiolitis, which is a common virus (RSV) in kids under 2 years old during cold and flu season. It WRECKED Jett. He'd have serious fits of coughing, which frequently turned into almost choking, then sometimes vomiting. His eyes would water and his nose never stopped running (it still hasn't). We'd had his 4-month well-baby visit scheduled last Monday, to get his first round of immunizations, but instead, got tested for whooping cough and sent home with a nebulizer machine (like a portable humidifier that sounds like a generator with a tube leading to an oxygen mask for dispensing of inhaled medication). We'd been concerned that he'd been sick for three weeks already, but the choking thing was really concerning, and he wasn't getting better. That Monday night, I was in a full-blown panic as he was having a really difficult time breathing - his nose was completely stuffed up and his chest was just so congested - it sounded like his wheezing was wheezing. Terrible. I ended up calling his pediatrician after-hours to calm my fears and sent Kenny rushing out to a still-open pharmacy for some last minute Rx fills. It was rough. I slept sitting up with him in my arms, partly so that he could breathe better, and partly just to make sure he kept breathing. Kenny was concerned as well, but didn't fly off the handle as I had and thank god. Two of us can't both lose our heads and I am thankful every day that he's so very, very rational.

We'd had a trip to New Mexico planned that week, but postponed it on Tuesday with Jett's health in mind. Kenny and I took turns working from home so that we could tend to our son and take him to his daily doctor visits. Later that week, the pediatrician confided that she almost had us admitted to the hospital after seeing us Tuesday morning - he was in that bad of shape - if she didn't have the utmost faith in us to dispense his medication on a very rigid schedule. Whooping cough and pneumonia were ruled out in the course of the week, and bronchiolitis was diagnosed. We'd been given a fact sheet on this two or so weeks prior, when I'd first brought him in (to rule out something more serious than a cold), and I'd been looking for a fever, which never developed.

Now that he's on some medication to help open his airways and keep the phlem down, he's doing better. However, it's still a virus like the flu, and there's no medication for prescription to cure a virus. As such, his immune system simply has to kick in and kick this. The medication prescribed can only help ready his immune system for the epic battle. It sucks though because I can't even give him an antihistamine to dry up his runny, runny nose. There's no over-the-counter meds to give a baby.

He's been doing better and can breathe now and is hacking less and there's no more vomiting. But he's still struggling. His immune system had been depressed already in battling a cold for three weeks...and now this. And I can only think that we're going to send him back to daycare and he's going to pick this up again...Kids don't become immune to this, just as adults who've gotten the flu can still get the flu. And the pediatrician has informed us that the next cold he gets can easily turn into bronchiolitis. We anticipated him getting sick...we did start him in daycare, surrounded by 11 other snotty babies, at the beginning of cold and flu season...but we didn't anticipate almost hospitalizing our son. I don't want to go through this again.

So now that we're relieved that Jett's on the mend (though bronchiolitis can run a 21-day course...) and in no dire straits, I am impatient for him to be healthy again. This virus can stick around though, and it's messing with his sleep...and subsequently ours. He's still got just enough of a runny nose to stuff up his sinuses when he slumbers in a forward position. He's still got just enough of a cough to wake him several times a night. And oh yes...I forgot to mention that with all the hacking and snot spewing from our son...it was bound to happen that Kenny and I both caught colds. Bronchiolitis, per our now-worn fact sheet, will present as a simple head cold in adults. But contagious nonetheless. So we've been dealing with that. And being sick already sucks - the exhaustion and the endless river of mucus - but to try to function in a parental capacity and without the much-needed sleep my body sooo desperately needs while healing, well, it's pretty friggin awful.

And I can't be annoyed with Jett; he's just healing. But I need some sleep. And Kenny needs some sleep. It's just awful luck that we've all gotten sick at the same time, despite trying to keep Jett's germs at bay with several homeopathic remedies, herbal teas, daily meals of chicken noodle soup and antihistamines. It's just the situation that's irritating. I wish I could afford an in-home nanny (at least for the winter months) so that we wouldn't have to send him back to daycare to potentially get this awful virus again. A cold I can deal with (and expected). This, I never want to see again. But daycare it is.

Parenting is kicking my ass.