Survival

Well, we made it... kind of...  Nugget is finally past her virus, but now we have teething keeping us awake at night.  What I wouldn't give for her 12 hour nights of straight sleep again.  It'll happen, it will.  Someday.  Anyway, I figured I would share all of the things we tried to get through the most recent illness.  Other than her original stay in the hospital, this was the sickest I have yet to see her.  I think most, if not all moms will tell you they would much rather be sick than see their little one sick.  It is truly miserable!

1. Sleep/ leave the cleaning behind: Being that we were also sick, the complete lack of sleep kept us walking around like zombies.  We had to re-adopt our newborn baby strategies.  Sleep when she sleeps.  Take turns taking naps (one of us would watch Miss Nugget and the other would sleep.)  No matter what else we thought needed to be done, we let it slip a little in favor of getting ourselves healthy so we could take care of the little one.  The morning after a slightly calmer night, my husband reminded me I had told him to "bask in it [sleep], roll in it, savor it," when he offered to stay up with me while I pumped.  I may have been slightly loopy at this point :).   

2. Humidity: We actually thought we had this one covered.  We ran a (warm) vaporizer in her room 24/7 anyway due to her eczema (and the fact that Colorado has the driest air ever).  However, our little trip to the doctor convinced us to also get a cool mist humidifier.  He said because Colorado is so dry, these can go closer to the baby and the cool mist is soothing to her little throat and so would hopefully calm the cough keeping her up at night.  Well, I don't know if it was just a lucky coincidence... but the night we plugged the little green frog in, she slept nearly all night.  We were, to say the least, relieved.  The fact that it's a little green frog was also a plus (more on that someday).

 3. Sleeping at an angle: We tried a few versions of this (and btw, she didn't sleep with the blanket all around her face like that, this was post her waking and playing with it and I was watching during this whole nap ;)).  We did a little of the car seat, and while we did get one nap out of it, it didn't seem to help her coughing and mostly just confused her.  We did however end up propping up one side of her bed so her head was a little elevated while she slept.  No clue if it helped or not, but it is actually still that way.  The carseat?  Probably not something we'll try again, although she did enjoy waking up and playing in it when we tried it in the desperate throes of sleeplessness one night.  At least she wasn't a completely miserable and sick baby the whole time.  I am grateful for that.

And this is where we see my OCD...

 4. Stay home except for necessary things/ Go to the Doctor: Yep, Anni and I were on lockdown.  We didn't go out for days.  I think I made one trip to the grocery store, and that was about it, until we decided it had been enough and needed to go to the doctor.  We had been calling our pediatrician for a few days trying to decide whether or not we needed to come into the office.  We finally decided that if we were that unsure, we should take her in make sure.

Luckily, they said that while she had a respiratory virus that often leads to croup, she hadn't actually moved on to croup and was unlikely to at this point.  He gave us all the advice we had been following, plus the new bit about the cool air humidifier, and there you had it.     

This also means take help when you need it.  Daniel and I also needed rest, so he did take a day off of work so that we could try our best to recuperate.  I'm grateful that my husband is always willing to put us before work.  

5. It will end.  Just keep chanting that.  It really does end, it does.  And although new things may come, colds and viruses do end eventually.