Today I'm surviving off of many cups of coffee, we had a very late night last night. Yesterday Jacob wasn't feeling well. I chalked it up to having a fever and a really nasty cold. After a warm bath in hopes that the steam would help ease his breathing I sent him to bed with cold medicine and the vaporizer running. I kept getting an unsettling feeling and was checking on him every 15 minutes as his coughing seemed to get weaker. Every time I checked on him his wheezing sounds seemed to be more pronounced. When he was sleeping I could see his diaphragm jerking trying to move air, his whole upper body moving with each shallow breath he took. I kept asking him it he thought he needed to go to the hospital and he kept saying "I don't think I need to go yet. Let me sleep for a while". I know my kids pretty well, but they know their bodies better than I do and are really good about letting me know when something isn't right with them. Finally at almost 1:00 am I couldn't stop this nagging feeling that we needed to head to the hospital; I knew I wouldn't get any sleep until I knew for sure if it was just a really stuffy nose or something worse. I woke the other boys and packed them in the van and we drove down to the hospital. I know I said that if my kid was having problems breathing I would call for an ambulance, but I still had to take the other two with me; and for all I knew it could have just been a stuffy nose.
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| My poor baby finally breathing a bit easier. |
Honestly, it drives me crazy when I take my kid to the hospital because I think there could really be something wrong them and they want to chit chat and get height, weight, etc. I'm thinking "my kid is struggling to breathe and you want to chit chat". We finally get into a room and they inform me his oxygen levels are really low at 89%, they like them to be not lower than 95. They gave him some steroids and got a breathing treatment ready for Jake and he had a mini panic attack; he thought they were going to put him to sleep. *The last time we wore a mask was for his scope and he remembers waking up rough. After explaining that it was clean air and I wouldn't allow them to put him to sleep or poke him with needles he was okay with it. After the treatment he was put on oxygen for a bit, then they rechecked him and gave him another treatment. They repeated this cycle for about an hour, before he finally started to respond. We started taking him off the oxygen for short periods of time and his levels would continue to drop back down to 90 after 7-10 and they would put him back on it. He was taken for an x-ray that came back clear, thankfully.
The other boys were wide awake and excited to sit and watch TV all night. They learned they are not fans of infomercials, lucky for them we found some old Three Stooges to watch for about 2 hours. All three were up the whole night, red eyed and wired. After five hours, 4 breathing treatments, and 4 hours of oxygen we were handed an at home nebulizer and a prescription.
When we got home around 7 everyone headed off to bed. The younger two would not be going to school today. Jordan on the other hand had to be at school (No school- No practice), he slept for a couple hours before going in for a half day. He really didn't want to miss his first team practice. We are all still in a sleep deprived haze, but managing.
I was afraid to look like naïve parent for taking my kid to the hospital in the middle of the night for what might have been just symptoms of the common cold. I just had to follow my instinct that something wasn't right. I know myself to over react in the middle of the night, I have a fear that my boys may go to sleep and not wake up. After talking with the many nurses and doctors whom we saw last night, I was informed that with the way his levels kept dropping so rapidly that if I had not brought him in we could have had a very different result this morning. I'm very grateful that I listened to my gut and to my child. I would rather look naïve or an over protective mother than to ignore something that could seriously be wrong. Mothers are give a gut instincts for a reason, we have to trust ourselves to listen to it.
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