After the extra kids were picked up yesterday, I suddenly developed a terrible headache that soon progressed into a migraine. Oh, I was not happy. I e-mailed DH (dear husband) to come home as soon as humanly possible. He did. I was so relieved to see him when he walked in at 3:15. I was upstairs by 3:30. I napped for the next two hours. I felt better when I woke up for about fifteen minutes, and then it started coming back. So I stayed in the dark bedroom for just about the whole night. I have a little residual headache now, but nothing like yesterday. DH took over with the kids, even so far as making dinner when I didn't even have anything pulled out (I was planning to make dinner during naptimes, but had to lay on the couch instead).
B and J are both coughing now, so the nebulizers are getting a work out yesterday and today. Neither are showing signs of any respiratory distress beyond coughing, so hopefully we're in the clear. I stil remember our first bout with breathing trouble. DH was at a conference for the weekend and I was staying at my parents, but they were out for the evening. B's cold kept getting worse. I was on the phone with the doctors a lot, looking for these foreign concepts they were asking me: Is his breathing too fast? (Um . . .what's too fast? How do I count his respirations?) Is he retracting? Can you see his ribs with each breath? (Um . . . definitely!) Is he wheezing? (Um . . . you mean that awful noise he's making every time he tries to breath?) They sent me to the ER - I think my parents came home in time to watch A so I didn't have to take both of them - with my little 10 month old baby boy. It was so scary. We were sent right back, and had to test him for RSV (a truly unpleasant test requiring me to hold him down as they shove a tube down his nose) which came back positive, and we were admitted. During all that, my dad showed up to keep me company, my in-laws showed up (my MIL couldn't help but start crying at seeing B looking so small, asleep on my chest, hooked up to monitors - a sentiment I understood but couldn't deal with right then), and I was troubled with the decision of when to call DH. The trouble was, he was far away without any way to get home on his own. What would I solve by telling about all this? It wasn't life or death, though it was scary - he would just get really worried about it. B was admitted and everything was brought under control in a day or two. It was tough because I was still nursing then, so I had to go home to nurse A and then come back for B. Luckily I did have some expressed milk for my parents to give A, too. We had to go back in a few weeks, and again in two months to be admitted again (that was on New Year's Eve - what a way to ring in the New Year!). I think we had a couple more ER visits that first winter. Lots of fun.
The following RSV season we ended up in the ER a bunch of times too, but we weren't admitted. The next season was J's first, and se ended up in the hospital with RSV pneumonia, which was actually worse than all of B's episodes - she actually needed to be given oxygen in addition to all the medication.
In any case, as long as we catch the colds early, we're doing okay. Hopefully it stays that way!
I'm off to get the kids and me ready for school. There's a Hannukah party at the boys' school that J and I can go to at 11 - I'm really looking forward to it, as long as my headache doesn't come back!
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