Sick Baby

Tommy is sick. We really try to keep our hands clean and always clean and sterilize his bottles and pacifiers but I'm a teacher and around germy kids. Bill is a delivery driver and around dirt and germs. And of course, Tommy goes to daycare which, while they do a great job cleaning, is full of germs.

About a week ago, Tommy started being congested in the morning and coughing from time to time. By Tuesday, he had a pretty nasty cough going and I was worried but he had no fever and was eating and sleeping fine. By Wednesday night, he had a bit of a wheeze. He slept terrible that night and I ended up holding him semi-upright on my chest for most of the night. Thursday morning, I called into work and called the pediatrician's office as soon as they opened.

We got an appointment for 10:30 and by then, I was really freaked out by the amount of wheezing Tommy was doing. They weighed Tommy and he's up to 15lbs 1oz! The doctor listened to his chest and agreed that he had a nasty wheeze. She did a swab to test for RSV. Luckily, that came back negative.

They determined that he had a cold virus but his little body wasn't tolerating it like most people would. They decided to give him a nebulizer treatment of Alubterol to see if that help his wheezing. He HATED the treatment. He tolerated it for about a minute and a half but then he was done and screamed his little head off for the rest of the 10 minute treatment. The doctor came back in and listened to his lungs and they were much clearer. The doctor prescribed a treatment of Albuterol 3-4 times a day for a week to help clear him out. We bring him back to the be rechecked next Wednesday. So a company delivered the nebulizer to our house and we've been doing the treatments as best as we can. Daycare is able to take care of 2 treatments a day so yesterday I only had to do 2 at home. Tommy hates it. It's like we're torturing him.

My poor little guy.

Today, we waited until he was napping and did the treatment then. It worked but he isn't always going to be sleeping when he's due for a treatment. As long as it makes him better, I'll do it. An interesting comment the doctor made was that she has noticed that infants who react to cold viruses in this way, often end up with some form of asthma later in life. I have exercise induced asthma that I've pretty much outgrown but both Bill and I have aunts with severe asthma. I really hope Tommy doesn't have to deal this. I'm not going to worry about it yet though, even the doctor said to just keep it in mind for later. She said she isn't going to make any predictions and we'll deal with whatever Tommy throws us later on. Until then, I'm hoping my poor little guy is 100% better soon. He sounds much better today!