croup is poop.

So remember on Friday how I blogged that my weekend was going to be lame? Woah, was I right. I must be some sort of prophet or something.

I had gotten extremely little sleep on Thursday night, so the highlight of Friday night was going to bed early, with the hopes of getting 7 or 8 hours of sleep. Since this has happened less than 10 times since Jane was born (not entirely her fault; my capability to sleep deeply has been destroyed, so I wake up a lot), I am not sure why I was going to be treated to a night of glorious sleep, but a girl can dream, I guess. When I was going to bed, I heard Jane cough a couple of times, and it sounded a little funny, but she had a cold, and she was still sleeping OK, so I let her be.

At midnight, I woke up to the sound of Jane crying, coughing (weird barky cough again) and struggling to breathe. Seriously guys - if I know you in person I will be happy to do the demonstration of her lack of breathing for you, but suffice to say, she was really, really struggling. I knew immediately that it was croup (she had a much milder case of it in the past), so I knew to get her in either really cold air or steam. I brought her outside while Greg turned on the shower, and of course it wasn't REALLY cold out so it wasn't helping - and the steam didn't instantly help either.

You guys, I was scared out of my effing mind. There have been many, many times I've diagnosed Jane with something terrible, but this was the first time I was actually, truly scared for her life. Croup is a condition/virus that causes inflammation in the upper airwaves that causes children to have the weird cough and restricted breathing - and it usually comes on super fast during the night - you know, precisely when the doctor's office isn't open. We had called the answering service at her doctor's office, but I couldn't decide if it would be a better move to just bring her to the ER-but at the same time, I didn't want to get her away from the steam. I decided to stay with the steam - and after about a half hour, she slowly but surely began to get more air back in her lungs.

By the time I actually spoke to her doctor (about 1 a.m.) she was still wheezing, although her mood was much better and she was ready to play all night. Her doc also immediately diagnosed croup based on my description (and excellent demonstration of Jane's breathing, or lack thereof). She called in a prescription to the 24-hour CVS that I have banned except for emergencies (of which this was one) so Greg was able to go pick up the steroid right away. It wasn't until three in the morning that we all finally went back to bed. We had Jane sleep with us because I really wanted to monitor her breathing up close.

Jane's mood has been for crap all weekend, poor thing, and this morning I decided that she might have an ear infection, so it was off to the Minute Clinic at a different CVS. Luckily, there was no ear infection - I think the diagnosis was cabin fever, because she was much happier to be out of the house.

What a long weekend. And to think it is an hour shorter than all of the other weekends!