Baby gets her non-stellar sleeping skills from me. She’s already a light sleeper, but when she’s sick I swear she can hear EVERYTHING. The same goes for when we have company over. So her having a fever part of the weekend and having company made for several long nights. (We can’t very well let her scream in her bed/PNP when we have company over, so she ended up in bed with us.)
I’ve already mentioned what joy we had on Sunday night. It was terrible. She woke up every 2 hours. I decided to let her cry herself back to sleep and she cried for 50 straight minutes one time, another time 15, another time 20. Monday morning she woke up a little snotty.
I dropped her off at day care explaining that this was a new snotty nose from letting her scream and that she’d been afebrile since Sunday afternoon. When I picked her up I noticed that ALL of the kids at day care had snotty noses and coughs. Hmm. So is this a virus that she was due to get from day care OR is it my fault for letting her cry and scream?
Unfortunately, the differential doesn’t matter. Monday night was a repeat of Sunday. She had several crying bouts and the longest lasted about 30 minutes or so. The more she cried the more she coughed. Several times it sounded like she was dry heaving between screams. Tuesday morning she sounded like a baritone baby from all the coughing, crying, snotting, and screaming.
Last night before I put her down I had to do a double-take next to her PNP. Sure enough there was dried throw-up on the floor. She cried so hard she made herself vomit. I felt terrible. I gave her Benadryl and she was eager to go down for the night.
She coughed most of the night. Several times she cried and we took turns going to her, but around midnight she was so congested I couldn’t stand the thought of putting her down by herself again. I didn’t want her to cry herself into a vomiting-drained-mucous fit. At this point her regular coughs were making her dry heave. I gave her more Benadryl and Tylenol (coughing makes you sore!) and brought her to bed with me.
I hated to do it, but there’s no clear cut answer. She was awake for an hour before she finally coughed herself to sleep. Then she continued to cough and toss and turn and cry in her sleep until morning.
This morning she was in an okay mood. We used the bulb syringe to try to get some snot from her nose, but very little clear snot actually came out.
Up until this point the only thing I’ve had to give her for any kind of congestion is Benadryl. I have some baby Zyrtec, but I’m not convinced this is allergy-related, so I’ve not used it since last year when she broke out into hives and we thought she was allergic to milk. But she tested negative for everything, so it’s been in the back of the cabinet since then. At least the Benadryl dries her out some, but not very much. I’d asked around to the mom-squad at work and one suggested I call the Walgreens DPh to ask if they could look up to see if you could give anything else to a younger person. (Most labels say you can’t give anything under the age of 6.)
So this morning right as we were going out the door I called. They told me something I could give her for the congestion. I had an adult pill version in the cabinet that met the dosage requirement and he said I could give that to her if I thought she could swallow a pill, but they had a liquid version I could get, too.
I handed the little red pill to her and told her it was medicine to help her nose feel better, and I showed her 2 mini M&Ms and told her if she was able to take her medicine I’d give her the candy, too. She took it in her small hands, bit it in half, and swallowed. I was so excited I jumped up and down. The Hater kept trying to push her sippy cup at her, tried to get her to drink because he knew how yucky it tasted. She went for the second half and chewed and chewed and made a terrible face, but it went down! Hooray! She took her chocolate and her water and was ready to leave.
Day care refused to take the other pill to give to her at lunch because it was “adult medicine” and not “kid medicine”. I tried to explain it was actually the same medicine, and a smaller dose than what was recommended for her by almost a third. But, no, which is okay with me. They’ve not called, so I assume everything is just peachy and less snotty than it was this morning.
Our PCP doc has this awesome program where you can go online and look at your test results, make appointments, and email them questions. So I logged on as Baby and asked if there was any kind of cough suppressant that she can have. In less than 2 hours he emailed back something that I can get this afternoon (liquid cough suppressant) when I also get the other liquid version of the decongestant.
I’m hopeful for a better night tonight. I do expect her to wake up halfway through and need another dose of everything, but hopefully she’ll be able to go back to sleep in her room after it’s over. I’ve not decided yet if I’m going to try to get her to stay in her own room – it’ll totally depend on how congested and miserable she sounds at the time and how exhausted I am. And how guilty I feel about the crusty vomit on the floor.
1 comment:
I'm delighted by that program. Most docs are afraid of technology like that. Some, because they just don't like technology -- I want to practice medicine the way I want to, dammit! -- but most because they feel (rightly) that it costs them time, hence, money, to look at emails and respond, but they don't get paid for it. And there's a legal side, too -- you misread their response --Well, I THOUGHT the email said to gargle with drain cleaner! -- and suddenly they're on the hook.
So I'm glad you have a doc who's cool with it.
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