scary night

Last night Brie woke us up with her coughing. Since it sounded like she was having some trouble breathing, we pulled her into bed with us, just so we'd be right there if it got worse.

A few hours later I woke up to feel this little body trying to crawl up me, clawing and pawing me and coughing like a seal and gasping for air. And she was burning up.

The coughing like a seal clued us in: it's the classic symptom of croup. So Adam started running hot water and got out our basket of first aid stuff, while I held her upright and rocked her, and told her soothing things like, "it's okay, Mommy's right here." Of course, when I said that, her sad little voice croaked, "Dada?" and so I changed my mantra to, "Yes, Daddy's here, Mommy's here, Brigid's here, you're okay."

We got her out of her sleep sack and took her temperature, which registered at 103.7. By the time the water in the bathroom was hot, she was breathing more easily just from being upright, so we gave her Tylenol, and left her sleepsack off, realizing that in our tiredness earlier we hadn't thought that pulling her into bed with us (under a down comforter and next to two warm adult bodies) negated the need for her fleece sleepsack. I'm still not sure how much of her temperature was being sick and how much was overheating.

We got her to drink water, and put the steamer in our room next to the bed. Then Adam propped her up on his chest so that she could sleep tilted upright, and we all slowly fell back asleep again, thanking God that he'd answered our nightly prayer to keep our daughter breathing.


This morning her fever is gone, and so's the croup-y cough, though she's still froggy and tired. My guess is we might have some more coughing tonight, but she's perked up considerably this morning.

Last night was so scary though. I'm never going to forget rocking her in my arms while she was burning up, and still twitchy in dream-sleep and coughing hard and trying to breathe. Wow. What a night.

-Jess