Aaron's Blog

Archive for the ‘Illness’ Category

Aaron had been very excited about Christmas from the moment we put the Christmas Tree up, but unfortunately on Christmas Eve, he got ill with croup again.  We had just gone to bed when we started to hear Aaron coughing badly and then crying and wheezing. So we got him out of his bed and brought him in to us and the poor boy started to get get flustered with not being able to breath properly.  It was getting so bad that we almost took him to casualty which would have been an absolute nightmare on Christmas Eve.  Luckily, Kelly managed to calm him down and he came into bed with us for a little while and nodded off until he was calm enough to go back into his bed. Suffice to say, we didn’t sleep much after that as  we were both keeping an ear out to hear him breathing, but he was fine for the rest of the night and slept right through.

On Christmas morning, Ben was the first to get up, with Aaron not far behind but he didn’t look and sound very well. His little voice was all croaky and he looked quite pale. He was excited though when he saw that his stocking was brimming over with presents from Father Christmas! It didn’t take him long to start digging in and opening presents, and even started munching on chocolate that was in his stocking! Thank goodness he was enjoying himself still even after the awful night he had had!

Once the stocking presents had all been opened (and some fully eaten!), we went downstairs and Aaron went a little mad when he saw the huge amount of presents under the tree! He was saying ‘Wow…wee’ quite a lot! I had to stop him from diving straight in and unwrapping the first presents he came to! It took most of the morning to finish opening the presents, and by this time, Aaron was so excited he was being a little naughty! Some of the presents he had included a new Spider-Man ride on bike, Rex from Toy Story, a Spider-Man figure, clothes, chocolate, some nice new books, a new toy bus, Penguin Race game, Robo Fish, lots of little toy cars, Mario Kart Scalextric (joint present from Father Christmas with Ben) and many other items which he loved!   He was so interested in playing with his new toys that he didn’t eat loads for Christmas Dinner, though I guess he wasn’t feeling up to it much due to his croaky croup, although he was fine with chocolate! He spent the rest of they day playing, apart from a few cuddles as he was tired, and showed Nan Nan and Pops and Grandma and Grandpa Tony some of his presents on the web cam before tea time.

In the end, Aaron had a lovely Christmas day and seemed to be much better by bed time. There were no croup attacks that night, thank goodness, and he had a decent sleep which helped a lot!

Here are some photographs of Aaron on Christmas Day.

[Show as slideshow]

Kelly and I had a scare a couple of weeks ago as Aaron had to go to hospital as he was struggling to breathe! What started off with us thinking that he had caught a bad cough from Ben turned into a hellish day for all of us!

It started off in the morning when he got up and sounded a bit wheezy but then he started being sick and was very worked up to the point where he was struggling to catch his breathe. So Kelly rang the doctors and managed to get him in for 9:50 and I went off to work as normal expecting it to be a bad cough or chest infection, but when I got out of a meeting at work, I saw a text from Kelly to say ‘at hospital’ so that was a shock! As there was hardly any signal at the hospital it took ages to find out what had happened and what was going on, but eventually I found out that Aaron was struggling to breathe in the waiting area at the doctors so a nurse rushed him in and said to Kelly ‘ I don’t want to alarm you, but I am going to call an ambulance to take you both to hospital’ so that obviously shocked Kelly. So they went off in an ambulance, buggy and all, and they put an oxygen mask on Aaron. At this point Aaron was extremely worked up and wouldn’t have any medicine, so at the hospital they had to pin him down in the waiting area in front of other patients (!) and the nurse had to force a syringe in his mouth with steroids in to open up his air ways.  This obviously had them both in tears but thankfully, it did the trick pretty soon after, as he started to settle down and eventually had a drink of squash that they provided.

By this time it was gone midday and the nurse asked them both to stay on as long as they wanted to, but just after 1:15pm Kelly decided to go home so I went and picked them up and worked from home in the afternoon. A couple of paediatric nurses visited about 20 minutes after we arrived home to do a check up on Aaron, but by this time he was getting much better thank goodness and was actually finally eating something when they arrived. They called again later in the day and a couple of times the next day before eventually releasing him from their care. It was that bad that they had assigned nurses to come and visit and check up on him!

What a hellish day it turned out to be. We were a bit nervous overnight but he was fine and slept pretty well, so the steroids worked like magic for him and he gradually got back to normal over the next few days.

Aaron had his first year jabs on 28th May.  He didn’t like it at all and was fighting through the second jab that had to be done.  He had a couple of small bruises come up afterwards and was quite whiney for the rest of the day, especially if you tried to go near his jabs area.  He was still a brave boy though!

The nurse said that any symptoms from the jabs may appear up to a week after, and he unfortunately ended up with a bad case of conjunctivitis which had to be treated with eye drops.  It may not have had anything to do with the jabs as the jabs had nothing to do with conjunctivitis, but they may have helped him pick it up through his system working against the jabs.  It has taken a good 2-3 weeks for it to fully go, with Ben having it slightly as well at one point, but it looks to have finally gone.

We are very glad there is a long time until he is due more jabs!

The little man is getting bigger and bigger all the time now!  He is growing very well and doesn’t have any problems with eating at all. He would eat non-stop if he could though! 😉

He now has two teeth come through, the second making an appearance on the 2nd March, and they are both the ones on the bottom at the front. They are quite big now and very sharp so you don’t want him to bite you!

He is walking aided really well now, and seems to prefer walking around more than anything else.  It isn’t as bad now as before as he has growing that little bit taller, so its not as back-breaking as it was to start with. It won’t be long before he lets go and toddles off on his own.  Because he is taller and can stand up now, his walker is getting a bit small, so it won’t be long before that will be put away. He has already broken the vent in the kick board in the kitchen by ramming into it though. tut!

His favourite shows on TV are Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom and Peppa Pig. Probably because Ben watches them all the time! You can put the Ben and Holly theme music on at any point and Aaron will immediately stop and turn around to face where the music is coming from. Even if he is in a fit of tears, the music will cause him to stop and be quiet! lol  Kelly has some episodes on her phone for the car, just in case! He also likes the two bedtime songs that are played on Nick Junior just before 7pm.

Sleeping -wise, he has been on and off a lot recently. Teething hasn’t helped really but there has been several times when he has caused us to have hardly any sleep. Being in a room with Ben doesn’t help though, as Ben is a nightmare sleeper, so when he makes a noise, it wakes Aaron up. Ben is suffering from night terrors at the moment which means he is waking up lots crying and shouting, which obviously keeps Aaron awake as well.  Hopefully they will grow out of it soon as we are all desperate for a good night’s sleep!

While we were up in Weymouth recently staying with Kelly’s family, we took Aaron to the beach for the first time. He loved it playing in the sand and even tried to eat it!! We bought him a little bucket and spade which he enjoyed playing with, and was digging out the sand with his spade. He seemed to enjoy it loads.  Hopefully the weather will stay nice this year and we will be able to go a bit more often than the past few years!

He has had several colds this year (we all have actually), but is OK at the moment though a tad snotty still!  Not sure how he is getting them all the time but it coincides with Ben starting School, so we think he has been bringing all the germs back with him.  Aaron has had a couple of heat rashes though. The first time we thought it was Chicken Pox (it was going around the pre-school) but it turned out it wasn’t with the doctor saying it was just a virus. In a way we were hoping it was Chicken Pox as it is a lot better to get it out of the way now than when he is older.

Since Tuesday this week, Aaron has been very poorly indeed.  He has had a very high temperature with it reaching 39.5 degrees at one point! Kelly has hardly slept as he hasn’t wanted to sleep in his cot so she has had to stay up with him. The poor little man still had an appetite but was sooo hot all the time and just didn’t look very well at all. On Tuesday night Kelly got hold of NHS Direct for some advice as we were quite worried due to his high temperature, and they said that if it got to 40 degrees, then we should call a doctor.

Luckily, it didn’t reach that high, but stayed high enough for Kelly to call our normal Doctors on Thursday but they were useless as usual. They had no appointments so a doctor called her back and basically said the opposite to the NHS direct doctor. Our doctor said it was probably viral and it would pass in 7 to 10 days – no offer of a check over just in case or anything! In the end, the little man started to lose his high temperature during the day but still wouldn’t settle on his own to go to sleep even though he was absolutely shattered. In the end, I took him out for a ride in the car at half 10 last night to see if that would make a difference, and it did thankfully. Aaron feel asleep in the car but unfortunately woke when we got home. Even so, it didn’t take too much effort to get him back to sleep and he managed to stay in his cot and slept most of the night – not getting up till about 8am. Phew!

So, it looks like the worst of it is over now so fingers crossed he will make a full recovery in the next day or so and that we will all, finally, get a good nights sleep tonight!