My poor sick, sick baby!

So Sunday afternoon, Ryleigh developed a bit of a cough. Considering she had an ear infection two weeks ago and had been on antibiotics for ten days, frankly, I was irritated by this. In fact, I was even more irritated by the fact that my observant husband kept asking me if I planned to take her to the doctor Monday morning to check out the cough.

Jesse: "Honey, do you think Ryleigh should see the doctor tomorrow? That cough is pretty bad."
Me: "I took her to the doctor THREE times in November. No, I'm not taking her for a cough."

(Pause)

Jesse: "If you call and schedule it, I will take her to see the doctor. She might need more antibiotics."
Me: (Sigh) "Fine"

Well you cant call and schedule appointments on Sundays, so I figured he would forget and she would be better in the morning anyway. I would set up her humidifier and all would be right in the world.

Yeah, so around 5:00, Ryleigh started coughing. I mean, coughing. Non-stop. For about an hour and a half. I called the doctor, expecting to leave a message or something. Sure enough, they have a 24-hour nurses hotline, so I was able to talk to one of the nurses. A few suggestions later, I felt better, and had a plan to stop the cough. (Honey is a natural cough suppressant- did anyone know that? Oh, and apparently you are not really supposed to use those vaporizer things for babies, like Vicks vapor rub or the stuff for the bath. Go figure.) I also noticed she was starting to feel warm, and with a grimace, agreed that I would go ahead and call the doctor Monday morning just to check.

We calmed the cough, gave Ryleigh her bath and milk, turned on the humidifier, and put her to bed. Jesse stayed up a little bit, but then was ready for bed. For some reason, I just did not feel like going to bed. I was tired, but just didn't want to go to sleep.

Around 9:15, I started hearing a really weird noise from Ryleigh's room. It was something between a grunt and a moan. I muted the TV (I was watching the original Polyanna- a goodie!) and listened some more- she kept making the funny sound. I went to go check on her, and noticed that she was breathing incredibly fast. When I say fast, I mean like her chest was moving like that of a sprinter. Or a dog panting. I picked her up and brought her with me to the couch. I thought perhaps it might be a night where she just needed to sleep sitting up, allowing her to breathe easier. But her breathing never slowed. And she was visibly uncomfortable, shifting every few minutes, trying to find a comfortable position. Around midnight, I decided there was not much more I could do and she clearly was not comfortable sleeping on me, so I put her back in her bed, and headed to my own bed, turning the monitor way up.

About 45 minutes later, I woke up to Jesse bringing Ryleigh in our bed. He said he heard her moaning over the monitor and was freaking out about how fast she was breathing. Also, her fever had totally spiked in the 45 minutes I had put her to bed. So after many deliberations, we decided to see if she would rest easier with us and at least let us wait until the morning to make any decisions.

30 minutes later, Ryleigh woke up screaming. Uncontrollably. And coughing. And the panting continued. By this point, I was panicked. Something was clearly wrong. We debated going to the ER, but we were hesitant. Remember last Christmas when we took Ryleigh to the ER? Yeah, we JUST finished fighting the insurance company and paying off that visit last week. Literally. So, obviously we were hesitant to open a new can of worms.

We got online and tried to do some research to figure out what it could be and if there was anything we could do.

Nothing calmed her down though. So finally, I turned on The Wiggles (at 2:30 in the morning) and settled on the couch with a very uncomfortable, feverish, panting, coughing baby in my lap. Needless to say, we did not get much sleep.

Monday morning finally came, and I was on the phone with the doctor's office at 7 am. We were the first to arrive to the doctor's office, and they sent us straight back. We did not see Ryleigh's normal doctor, but the same doctor who diagnosed her ear infection a few weeks back. Ryleigh immediately starting freaking out when the doctor and nurses started trying to do their exams. Her breathing was out of control (breathing approximately 80 breaths-per-minute with an oxygen level of 97%) and the doctor finally said that we could not do anything more until they gave her a breathing treatment to calm her down and try to get a handle on her ability to breathe.

So, we did the first breathing treatment. After about 15 minutes, the doctor came back in to test Ryleigh's levels again. This time it was about 60 breaths-per-minute, but her oxygen level dropped down to 96%. The doctor asked us to do another breathing treatment. Again, she came back, and tested her levels. Her breaths-per-minute dropped to about 50 breaths-per-minute, but her oxygen level dropped again to 95%. So essentially, she was breathing slower, but her body was not absorbing as much oxygen.

The doctor said she thought that Ryleigh had pneumonia, and was borderline for being admitted to the hospital. I asked what she meant by "borderline," and she said, "if her oxygen level drops below 95%, she is going to the hospital. Period." She told us that there were only two reasons to be admitted to the hospital with pneumonia and the inability to breathe is the main reason. She also told us we would have been completely justified in taking Ryleigh to the ER the night before...geez. Stubborn Mama screwed up.

The doctor ordered a chest x-ray to confirm the pneumonia, and sent us to the other office to get the x-ray taken. Jesse and I had to literally hold her down on the table while she screamed her head off and cried "Da-da!" over and over. Talk about a heart-breaker.

As it turns out, Ryleigh did NOT have pneumonia (whew!) and she did not have to be admitted to the hospital, thank the Lord. We were sent home with a nebulizer, breathing treatments every 4 hours, antibiotics, and steroids. A second trip to the doctor on Tuesday confirmed that her breathing had slowed and her oxygen levels had jumped back up to 99%. Her official diagnosis was bronchitis, but we are supposed to watch her closely to make sure it was not the start of asthma or wheezing episodes.

All in all, it was a very scary experience. A word of advice to all you moms out there: trust your gut. Even at 2 in the morning. Don't let your mind reason your way out of a situation you know feels wrong. If your baby is struggling to breathe for any reason, you get your butt to the ER!!

Here we are, four days later, and Ryleigh is still pretty puny. She wants her teddy bear and Mama all the time. The cough remains and I'm supposed to continue the breathing treatments for the next week.

Never again will I claim that a cough is insignificant. Never again.