I had two blog posts for yesterday. One on the horror of gymnastics class and one on weird women encounters. Then life happened and I got nothing up yesterday. Then kids happened, I refocused for today. The other stuff will get posted, but this is what I wanted to say today.
My baby has asthma. We’ve known that for a while, and he has this little preventative Flo-Vent he’s on, but we’ve never really had a severe asthma attack. He takes longer to get over colds and the like and his coughs, when he gets them, always sound terrible. Well, he just had his first severe asthma attack. Mind you, I didn’t know what it was at the time, just that I was scared. His nose started running Wednesday night, but by last night he was coughing and running a fever and struggling with his breathing. I gave him his inhaler and some ibuprofen. He “slept” with Bray and I so I could monitor him, but none of us really slept. His labored breathing had me up in the middle of the night debating whether to go to the ER. I was on WebMD dreaming up all these terrible possibilities – one included that he’d contracted the bird flu from Doo-Dah (you laugh, but I was in a panic). I got someone last minute to cover my deposition today and rushed him to the doctor this morning (they said they couldn’t see me til 10:45 but you mommas know when you won’t take no for an answer – I said someone has to see him now and I was at their office by 8:45). The doctor took his shirt off and showed me his chest pulsing in and out, contracting like crazy, and said, “this is what a severe asthma attack looks like.” She gave him breathing treatments and oral steroids and took his pulse-ox. His oxygen levels were at 91% (instead of 100%), and the doctor said if the numbers were in the 80s he would have to go to the hospital. We waited there, got his numbers up, and took another breathing treatment. He has new meds to get him better, and I now know what to look for when he gets sick.
All this said, it just refocused me. When I had to run into work after the doctor visit, the baby was grief-stricken. This little time with them, it is so precious. It is hard. I’m not saying it’s not hard – it is SO hard. But it is precious. And everything should be prioritized around that. Not to your detriment, of course, but I I must be mindful that a lot of the mayhem going around right now is of my own making and my kids are going to suffer if I don’t regroup a little bit.
Yesterday morning, the eldest and I got to cuddle for a while in bed as he was the first one up. He would say, “no kisses!,” and I of course would smother him with tons of kisses and say, “LITTLE kisses!” He would shout back, “BIG kisses,” whereupon we would just smack each other all over with big slobbery kisses. I tear up writing about it. Last night, when the baby was sick, I laid in bed next to him until he fell asleep, and he laid there holding my hand and just rubbing his thumb back and forth over the top of my hand. Heart. Melting. Sweet precious sick baby rubbing my hand. These wee ones need us so much. Try to make sure you make sweet intimate positive treasured moments happen every single day. The days are flying by.
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