Croup is a Bitch

Croup is a bitch. She's a bitch that sneaks into your house in the middle of the night and closes up your child's airways so that you are awoken at 3:30 a.m. to the tell-tell sound of a barking cough coming from the baby's room. If you've been around someone with croup, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't heard it before, once you do hear it you will instantly know what it is.

Croup almost always starts in the night; it almost always sounds better during the day; but it's 100% always scary. It's scary when your child coughs and sounds more like an animal than a baby. It's scary when their coughing makes them cry. And it's even scarier when they wheeze as they inhale. Let me repeat: croup is a bitch.

I'm grateful I live in a time and place where a quick trip to the doctor's office will yield a prescription for steriods that will take down the swelling and return breathing to normal. I try not to be the momma who's always rushing to the doctor's office. (Well, once I got past the first 18 months of momma-hood, I try not to be, but that's another blog altogether.) I'll wait out a fever for a couple of days and I'll let loose stools go for close to two weeks before we call. But I don't mess with the croup. This is the third time in three years that we've had it and my rule is: you wake up with the croup and momma's calling the doctor. (But now, I do wait until the office opens, but again, another blog.)

So now, we've had a dose of medicine at the doctor's office and the rest is waiting to be picked up at the pharmacy this afternoon. Hopefully, we'll have a more restful night tonight. And hopefully croup will go away and stay far, far away for a long time.