Let's not do this again for a while.

John Paul and I spent the night in the hospital last night.

John Paul has had a cold/runny nose for about 4 weeks and couldn't kick it. So Tuesday I took him to his pediatrician (actually we saw the nurse practitioner) . She said she thought he had a sinus infection and put him on antibiotics AGAIN - 4th time in 4 months, and thought he might have allergies so she put him on zyrtec. He wasn't getting any better on either drug, and yesterday he woke up coughing quite a bit. We had planned on going to my cousin's house for a cookout about an hour north of here, so we went ahead and went. While we were there, he kept getting worse and worse, started wheezing and really having trouble breathing. I called the on-call nurse at our pediatrician and she told me to go to Urgent Care and he might need a breathing treatment. So we left and drove home to go to Urgent care. I dropped Madeleine off at mom's house and Ken had a wedding gig so he had to go set up. As soon as we got there, the waiting room was full but the nurse called me back immediately because she could hear how he was breathing and coughing. She took his shirt off and she and the doctor saw his chest, and the doctor told the nurse to get a breathing treatment and call 911. I felt like a terrible mother - I should have brought him earlier! I started crying :( I held him and gave him the treatment, then about 10 paramedics came in and started looking and listening to him. It was really scary for both of us! They went and got his car seat out of my car and strapped it right on the stretcher and we went in the ambulance to the hospital. When we got there he was still in distress so they gave him an hour long treatment. It was really hard to hold him still for that long! They also gave him an oral steroid and the doctors and nurses took a very complete history and listened and were very nice and helpful. He was improving but not enough to go home. He got a chest Xray and they said it and all his symptoms were consistent with asthma. They put some numbing cream on his hand just in case he had to get an iv, and brought him lots of toys to play with. They told us we would be spending the night so I called my dad and had him bring me a bag of stuff. I couldn't get a hold of Ken for several hours. He was on breathing treatments every 2 hours all night - and his oxygen kept dropping so they had to wake him up and give him oxygen, take his vitals, give him treatments it seemed like every 20 minutes, while I slept on the futon for midgets ;) By the morning he was doing much better, and they moved him to every 3 hour treatments and then every 4 hours. He was totally hyper from the "baby speed" aka albuterol, exhausted but couldn't sleep, but he really couldn't have been a better baby. All the nurses and doctors were gushing over how cute he is - lol. Madeleine stayed with my mom, we tried to have her spend the night at her house for the first time, but she refused to go to sleep so mom brought her home and put her in her own bed, and waited here for Ken until 1 am. Poor Mom!

Anyway, he is doing much better now, he's sleeping in his own bed. He is going to be on steroids for 3 more days, and the 4x a day albuterol treatments for a few more days, then he's supposed to see the pediatrician this week. He's also supposed to have some allergy testing done within the month. Right now I'm exhausted and sore and going to bed!