A Rough Night

For the past few nights, Emma has been coughing quite a bit while sleeping. This has had the effect of waking her up several times in the night, and consequently waking Mel and me up as well. So last night after dinner we took Emma to the doctor to see if there was something they could do. The doctor said the has a condition called bronchalitis. Mel was afraid that it would be asthma since she herself has asthma. However the doctor said that they do not diagnose asthma in patients younger than three years of age, and even then there would need to be repeat episodes before they came to that diagnosis. The treatment is to administer albuterol to Emma using a nebulizer as necessary. She did a good job taking the first treatment in the doctor's office. She didn't struggle at all with having the mask help up to her face. It may have helped that she was tired. We haven't administered any treatments at home yet. Hopefully those go as well.

As if that wasn't enough. Emma was giving us some difficulties when it came to be time to go to bed, so after hearing her scream for a while that she wanted out, Emma cuddled with Mel on the chair in the living room. While she did that, I went back to the pharmacy to pick up Emma's medication. It took quite some time there because they were very busy and seemed to be understaffed at the pharmacy window. While I was waiting to pick up Emma's albuterol Mel called me. Apparently Emma was freaking out because Ike, our cat, was hissing and getting upset at a large stray cat that was outside the front window. Ike's actions frightened Emma, so Mel decided to remove Ike from the living room by getting him downstairs and closing the gate at the top of the stairway. When she tossed him downstairs though, Ike got even more upset. This scared Emma even more. When I got home, Mel was still holding Emma, who was at this time shaking still.

We absolutely could not get Emma to go to her bed. Every time we tried, she would start getting hysterical. We tried to get her to sleep in our bed, but that didn't work. Then while she was sitting on the bed, Ike jumped up on the bed, scaring Emma even more. So I ended up sitting with Emma on the chair in the living room. I tried to get her to let me lie down on the couch, but no, it had to be the chair. So Emma slept in my arms all night as I slept sitting up in the chair. I tried to put her in bed a few times when she was asleep--around midnight, 1:00, and 3:00--but every time I got out of the chair she would wake up enough to start saying "cuddle," indicating that she wanted to cuddle some more. Then as I carried her toward her room, she got even more upset. So I resigned myself to the fact that I would end up sleeping in the chair all night. When Mel got up at 5:15 this morning, I was finally able to get Emma in bed. I then laid down in bed myself for about half an hour before getting up. I certainly hope tonight goes better!