Our first ER visit is awarded to...

NB!  I have kind of thought he'd be the most likely kiddo to prompt an ER visit, but I thought we'd be headed there for injuries resulting from boy mischief.  Instead we made our first ER trip today for croup. Yuck!  No cool stories to tell for that. Our little NB picked up croup, I suspect, from his older brother, who managed to handle the illness just fine.  Last night, though was NB's second night of illness and I was worried about his breathing getting worse in the night without my knowing it.  I chose to spend the night on the couch with the monitor on my chest and shoulders.  I spent much of the night listening to him breathe, something I cannot normally hear on the monitor.  His breathing was just that loud.  At 2:30 a.m. I recorded his breathing in case I needed to play it for our doc today.  At the very least, I wanted DH to know what he was missing. Every now and then I wouldn't hear NB breathing at all and would wake up in a panic.  It was an awful night to say the least.

When he woke this morning, I found there was no need to have recorded his breathing.  He sounded the same when he was awake.  I had thought part of the noisiness was snoring from congestion, but it wasn't really.  Aside form having really coarse breathing, he was working very hard to take each breath and had stridor.  My baby was much worse than when I had put him to sleep.  So, I carted LO off to school, and NB straight to our pediatrician.  When she saw us in the waiting room, I told her of NB's stridor and she got us straight back.  He got a poke of steroids in his thigh, and she planned to watch us in the office for an hour or so.  I asked if she thought we needed the ER (I had considered heading straight there when he woke up), and she decided to send us.  NB officially had croup and his little airway wasn't liking it so much.  The ER have a medication to treat stridor that docs can't give in their offices, so Dr H was sending us to the ER to get that.

Dr. Lopez was our ER doc, and he said racemic epinephrine nebulizers were "old school" treatment.  He much preferred hypertonic saline nebs.  Guess I'm old enough to be considered "old school." He also thought NB had some wheezing (which I'm not really convinced he did), and he gave us an albuterol treatment which had no effect. Our saline nebs did wonders though.  NB was breathing more easily for about 10 minutes after the first (3% saline) one, and he started to perk up a little.  Our second saline neb was stronger and it really helped for about an hour or so.  After that one, NB was smiling and playing peak a boo with the nursing staff.  That's when we knew it was time to head home.

During our ER visit,; after the first saline neb.  NB was starting to perk up a little.

Finally with normal breathing, NB was ready to get into the ER cabinets...bedside urinal anyone?

It will still be another hour or so before our steroid shot starts to work, but it should make for a much easier night.  DH and LO ran to Target to get us a newer humidifier, so we'll have that help tonight too.  NB probably has another night or two of feeling worse before he feels better, but I'm confident he got enough breathing help today that he should stay out of the woods for the rest of his illness.  Here's hoping I can get a few more winks of sleep tonight.  While I don't relish the idea of bumps, bruises and broken bones, I certainly hope we don't make anymore ER visits for breathing problems.