Aaron's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘croup’

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.

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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 has and is still getting over his first proper illness which is Croup. This a virus in the respiratory tract and has caused Aaron to struggle to breath. In fact one night this week he woke up in a panic and he was really bad and we were on the verge of calling for an ambulance as he was really struggling to breath. Luckily he calmed down but Kelly had to stay up with him all night, just in case.

The following day we took him to the doctors who diagnosed it as a moderate case of Croup and gave us a prescription for a steroid table to give to him. After he took that, he cleared up really well and didn’t struggle to breathe any more, which was a major relief! Croup can get so bad that it can stop babies from breathing!

He now still has a bit of a cold and a chesty cough but nowhere near as bad as it was.  Hopefully he will get over it in a few days!