RSV at our house

Halle has RSV. It's so sad! She had a little cough the first few days of our trip to Indiana, but I thought it was from the heater blowing in our hotel room. Air blowing when I sleep always gives me a sore throat, so I thought it did to her too. But she kept getting worse and worse as the days went on. On the plane ride home (she did great on the flights btw) I realized how bad it had gotten. That night she was more fussy than usual and kept waking up in the night from coughing. In the morning I was catching up on some blogs and read about how Tannie's little boy had RSV. That's when I started to wonder if that's what it could be because we were around them a few days before we left. We also have been spending lots of time at the doctor's office, so we could have picked something up from there. I was glad that I already had a well baby appointment scheduled for the next day.

As I was getting her ready she started coughing really hard, and couldn't catch her breath. Then she started choking and stopped breathing. It was terrifying. Her little face looked so scared because she couldn't get any air. I was hitting her back and just trying to get her to breathe, but she couldn't. After about 10-15 seconds, which seemed like an eternity, I was about to call 911 (maybe a little dramatic, but I didn't know what else to do) but she gagged and threw up so she could breathe again. There was just so much mucous in her little airway that she couldn't get it out and choked on it. What's up with my kids scaring me with emergencies lately?

It turns out she does have RSV and she is on breathing treatments at home, which she hates. It's so sad. I have to hold this mask on her face. It feels really odd to hold something over a child's mouth like that. I'm not a fan, even though I know she is obviously able to breathe.

I was really nervous at the thought of RSV because I always think of that advertisement in some magazines that shows a baby with RSV. They are in the hospital and hooked up to all sorts of tubes, which is scary. But I learned that all kids get it by the age of 2. That's comforting since it just looks like a cold in most kids. (And I think Hayden actually had it last week because he has the exact same symptoms of a cough for a while and then acted sick.) He said they rarely have to hospitalize kids for RSV. I'm glad that I didn't have to wait any longer to get her to the doctor because we caught it before it could get very bad. I think the breathing treatments are already helping, even though she has only had 3 so far because she is already coughing a little less. She's such a good baby though. She's sleeping normal, and even smiles during the day. Except for the coughing and fussiness from that I woudn't even know she was sick. It can turn into something worse like pneumonia though, so just pray that it gets better and not worse!