Croup / Stridor

We had a scare last night with our sweet baby Ryan. (yes – today he’s my baby!) About 10:30 last night I heard him coughing and then crying and then coughing some more and I knew it was not just a small stirring. When I went in I found him coughing like a seal. Yep – this must be croup. It was crazy because he had not one symptom at all prior to this. By the time I got him to our room I realized he was really having a hard time getting his breath. We called our neighbor Paul to come over and stay with Riley and headed straight to Scottish Rite. I didn’t feel comfortable driving him alone, so Kevin drove us and I sat in Riley’s car seat right next to him. I knew he was going to be ok, but that we needed to get some sort of medicine into his lungs so he could catch his breath. As I talked with the hospital on the way they told me to get him to drink some juice and to let him breath in the cold air. He was so sweet just sitting there wheezing and holding tight to my hand. The harder he coughed the harder he squeezed. At one point the nurse heard him cough and asked if we needed to pull over and call 911. My quick response was that we needed to get to the hospital and the quickest way was to continue on our trip there in our car. Once we arrived, they weren’t in a huge hurry to help us, so I quickly rushed to the desk and asked if we could be seen immediately. The lady didn’t appreciate my assertiveness and that was when I burst into tears. I went to sit down and Kevin took over. Finally after a couple of minutes of listening to him hacking away, a nice man called us over and took us right back. They said he had croup and stridor. I have never heard of stridor, but from what I’ve read it can be serious so I’m so thankful we didn’t waste a minute and got him right to the hospital. They started him on a nebulizer right away and then an oral steroid. Within minutes he was almost completely fine! Miraculous for sure! We had to wait 2 hours after the treatment to see if he would have a recurrence of the incident, but thankfully he was a-ok! He didn’t sleep a wink until we returned home about 2am. He is contagious, so he’s home today with Daddy and they are having a great day. Even made it to Chick-filA! He has had no more signs of breathing issues and really isn’t even croup-y when he coughs. He’s a trooper! We are now really looking forward to a little break from the day-to-day and a nice relaxing Thanksgiving Day. We are very blessed and very thankful!

A big boy at the hospital

Hanging with Daddy at Chick-fil-A