Last night, I couldn’t help but think: this is how it happens. One minute they are fine and the next they have fallen off the bed in just the wrong way, or their fever goes from 102 to 107 before you even know anything is wrong or the medicine the dr. told you would work doesn’t work. And just like that, it is over.

LO has what is sometimes called ‘sudden onset croup’, or ‘spasmodic croup’, or even just ‘recurrent croup’ depending what Dr. I believe. She has no other symptoms other than suddenly waking up unable to breath. She wheezes in and out like she is in the midst of a severe asthma attack. Sometimes she also has the stereotypical seal bark cough associated with croup. During a bad attack her oxygen levels drop to the low 80s by the time we get her to the ER. Once the worse is over, usual after multiple doses of dexamethasone and epinephrine, it is like it never happened.
It happened last night and the dexamethasone we had at home wasn’t helping.
She was in the tub because the moisture helps and baths usually calm her down but it wasn’t working. She couldn’t get enough breath through her swollen little respiratory track to cry, just this horrible wheezing sound, and tears were pouring down her face and she was so clearly terrified. We were terrified. Her skin was changing colors and I was telling my husband to hurry as we rushed to the ER. My baby was so sick last night and all I could do was show up at the hospital with her wheezing in my arms and hope they could fix her. My heart in my hands.
The ‘fix’ is pumping her full of steroids and adrenaline that makes her heart beat like a trapped little bird in her chest and I sign consent for it immediately, every time. Me, the mom who sends organic goat milk to daycare and uses hats instead of sunscreen. Later, I'll google alternative treatments and medication side effects and best practice, but in that moment I sign, gratefully. ‘Come on, baby,’ I chant. ‘You can do this,’ I think. My husband and I hold hands, and hold her, and try to hold it together.
And then, 8 or so hours later, it is completely over. And life begins again.