Baby's First Upper Respiratory Infection

Its's as fun as it sounds, I swear.

It all started on tuesday when I got home from work and noticed that Maddy felt hot. Sure enough her temp was 101 degrees. Ross told me that he felt a new tooth, and sure enough, I felt a molar or pre-molar poking through. The next morning she woke up really fussy and hot still. Her temp was 102, but still no other symptoms. I gave her some baby Tylenol and went to work. While I was at work, my mother in law called and let me know that Maddy's temp was 103.2, and she was acting "sick". No symptoms, just really tired and quiet. So I called the pediatrician and they asked to see us that day. He saw her and found absolutely nothing wrong with her. He wanted me to call if the fever didn't resolve.

Thursday: My 5 day weekend arrived! Maddy's symptoms arrived at 5am on Friday morning with a runny nose and cough, fever of 101-102 continued. Called the pediatrician and he ordered a chest X-ray. I was surprised he suspected pneumonia, but pleased that he was being thorough. I didn't think a CXR would be a big deal, but holy crap it was. I guess I forgot that you have to stay very still for a chest X-ray...which you can't exactly tell a baby to do. They had to strap her upright into this little apparatus that was like a baby bicycle seat with a plastic cyliner on top that the baby goes into; complete with leather straps to really, strap the baby in tight. It was seriously like a baby torture device. Ross had to put on a lead apron and hold her arms above her head. Maddy was PISSED. She probably thought she actually was in a baby torture device. I hid behind the sheild with the imaging tech while she took the pictures. The nice thing was that I got to peak at the images myself as the tech checked them for their quality. While I'm no expert at reading chest X-rays, I have seen my fair share (including my own when I had pneumonia) and hers looked perfectly clear. (We still haven't gotten a call about the results, so I can imagine there's nothing to worry about).

Last night, Maddy kept waking up coughing and crying. Each time she inhaled to cry, she made this aweful wheezing, gasping sound. I panicked. Yep, I did. I've never had a sick baby before. I felt like I was back to the day that I brought her home from the hospital and I had no idea what to do with my 7 lb bundle of crying mess. This was unknown territory. Forget being a registered nurse; I work on adults. The only thing I recalled from nursing school about babies and kids, was that they have a much different range for their vital signs, and I conveniently remembered that when things start to go wrong with babies, they can get bad very, very quickly. Great. In fact, I think that as a nurse, I know just enough to be a very bad thing. "The burden of knowledge", as Ross calls it (but he can't take credit; we heard that on Scrubs when Perry's son has a cough and he's freaking out).

After an 11pm phone call to the advice nurse with Oregon Pediatrics, I found myself doing very obvious, simple things that I should have been doing instead of panicking and calling the on-call help: running a hot shower and creating a sauna to open up her airway, putting a pillow under her mattress to elevate the head of her bed, and putting the humidifier in her room. The things I could have read in "What to Expect in the First Year". Seriously. I willingly surrender my medical expertise when it comes to my child. I turn into a shaking, trembling mess when something is wrong with my baby. The only good it has done me so far is being able to listen to her lungs with my stethoscope and look at her X-ray and pretty much know she doesn't have pneumonia. That's something, right guys? .....GUUUUYS?!?!?!?!

Anyway...here we are on day 5 of this mess. No fever today. Terrible cough and super fussy and needy. She wants to be held and hugged ALL.THE. TIME. I will admit; i have enjoyed that last part. She is such a girl on the go that I can't remember the last time I got to cuddle and hold my baby so much. Today for about 2 hours straight she was just unhappy. She would cough, which would cause her to cry, which would cause her to cough more and make it hard for her to breathe. We made about 20 trips up the stairs to the upstairs bathroom where I had the shower running with hot water to create a steam room for her. After a while, it got to me, and I started crying for a moment. As I closed my eyes and started to cry a little, I heard her cries turn to laughter. I looked down, and through her tears, she was laughing! When I stopped crying, she stopped laughing and started crying again. Then I started crying more, just to release all my frustration, and she officially stopped crying and was just laughing her little head off. I hope that our relationship remains that way forever; cheering each other up when we both feel at our lowest.