Sicky Updates

Well, it looks like Ellie, after about 5 weeks, has finally turned a corner with her illness. Last week that nagging cough and stuffy nose finally eased up and our girl got a little relief. If her regular pattern holds she will probably get another cough and stuffy nose in about two weeks, but for now we are enjoying the break and she is back to sleeping and breathing well.

Lucas, on the other hand, went from bad to worse. Last Monday he developed a horrible hacking, gagging cough that sent Marty and I running into his room in the middle of the night multiple times thinking that he was choking to death. His nose went from stuffy to completely clogged. He also developed a low grade fever mid-week that didn't ease up for days. Last Thursday, we had the worst night we've ever had with Lucas. I put him to bed around 10pm as usual and then he woke up at 1am so congested he just could not breathe. He was coughing, hacking, crying and basically completely hysterical. Every time we got him to calm down and fall asleep, we'd attempt to lay him down in his crib and he'd immediately wake up, struggling to breathe in a panicked fit. We tried saline, the aspirator, and the humidifier. We tried putting him in his car seat (thinking the sitting up would help him breathe), and we tried letting him sleep on our shoulder while we were propped up in a nearly sitting position. Nothing really worked but we took shifts trying different things. He finally crashed out on my chest around 6am for about an hour. We were all completely exhausted.
Lucas with Uncle Kevin
Friday, he continued to struggle with sleep and also had trouble keeping his food down - he kept down 2 out of 6 meals. His fever was still about 100, so we called the pediatrician and took him first thing on Saturday. He was diagnosed with Bronchiolitis (aka RSV) which is a viral infection that you basically have to wait out. Some babies can develop serious complications from this virus, but he was diagnosed with a milder case and we were basically told to keep an eye on it and bring him back in if he started wheezing or if it seemed like he was developing pneumonia. It's annoying not to be able to give him anything to make him better, but I did feel better hearing confirmation that we were doing all the right things and that it wasn't anything more serious (I was a little worried that it might be whooping cough).

His fever finally broke Monday morning and Monday night he slept through the night for the first time in over a week. He is still a little congested and is coughing some, but he's much, much better than he was last week so he's definitely on the upswing. I think we might even have two relatively healthy children by this weekend! (fingers crossed!!)