We had a great Christmas Eve with our families. We had our traditional dinner with my family and then went to church with Nate's. We got the kids in bed, a little later than normal, but Alyssa and Mason were both excited for Christmas morning. Mason woke up in the middle of the night with a fever and said his head and throat hurt, so Nate gave him some medicine and he slept until morning. Mason was excited in the morning and didn't seem too sick. He had a bit of a croupy cough, but he didn't cough much. He opened presents and played with his toys all morning. He started feeling worse around lunchtime, so we put him down hoping he'd wake up feeling better. I happened to go upstairs during his nap and heard him crying/ coughing. It was so quiet, but when I went in he was a little distressed and didn't seem like he could catch his breath. I am so glad I went up there.
Nate took him out in the cold air for awhile and it seemed to help. He got worse from there though. He felt terrible and as the evening went on his breathing got louder. I always thought with croup, the kid would cough like crazy and that was the reason for respiratory distress. Mason hardly coughed, but when he did it was very barky so I knew it was croup. We googled the signs to watch for and felt like he was fine around bedtime. The poor kid couldn't sleep though so Nate tried to sleep with him on the couch. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling great that night either, so I was up a lot of the night. At 2am his breathing was a bit labored, but neither of us thought it was dangerous. I woke up at 7:30am and took one look/listen at Mason and knew he was in bad shape. He was breathing so hard and loud, the stridor was way worse. He was also retracting his chest with every breath. I debated whether to take him to the ER or to the clinic, Nate thought the clinic would be fine and they happened to have an appointment in 45 minutes. So I took him up there and when we checked in, even the receptionist was concerned. We saw the doctor and he confirmed croup and said he was really sick. He said we probably should have taken him to the ER a couple hours ago. I felt horrible, I knew they were wondering what kind of mother I was to not realize he was so bad. At first the doctor said we had a couple options, steroids and go home and wait, or a epinephrine breathing treatment that would require us to go to the ER for observation. I said lets do whatever is best for Mason. He checked Mason again and said he was going to send us to the hospital by ambulance. I guess he changed his mind about how bad he was. They did the breathing treatment and it helped immediately! He was breathing so much better after one minute of the treatment. The paramedics came and strapped Mason's car seat to the gurney and wheeled him out to the ambulance. It was so hard to see him on that gurney. He was so tiny. So sick.
We got to the ER and they said they were going to admit him. I knew he was pretty bad, but I was surprised how quickly they made the decision. Listening to the paramedic was interesting. He said that the doc at the academy clinic said he hadn't seen a kid that sick in years. My poor baby! We went up to our room and he had a few more breathing treatments. He hated them at first but when he realized they were helping him breath he tolerated it better.
Then he finally got to go to sleep. He didn't sleep much all night. He was so exhausted.
He perked up a bit in the evening. Alyssa came to visit and I think that helped. We went on a little wagon ride around the pediatric floor.
Checking out the bed. Isn't he so cute in the little gown?
They gave him all kinds of Christmas goodies. He liked the stickers. Nate spent the night with him and he slept good after the nurses finally brought his medicine and left him alone. The doctor came in the morning and said he could go home. I'm so incredibly thankful that this happened when it did. If it would have been a week before, Nate would have been gone. The night before would have been Christmas. I'm so glad Nate was here and we were able to enjoy Christmas day. Mason is back to his normal self now and we are so so happy to have our happy boy back. It's been a rough week for our family. The girls have been sick, Carly is teething as well. Nate and I haven't had much sleep. Here's to hoping that we start this new year out better than we ended last year :)
