Asthma and a Crib Tent

Man am I overtired. In fact the whole house is. The last two nights have been interesting. For those of you who work the night shift - Dad, Megan, John - I applaud you. I don't know how you do it.

I've been up with sick children. All 3 of them. I guess the plus side is they are all getting it and getting over it at once, no lingering for a few weeks. In and out. Of course with my younger two it is always just a cold like anybody else, but when my oldest son gets a cold, yup his asthma kicks in in full force. This weekend was particularly tough for him poor boy. Starting Saturday night, we started the nebulizer. By Sunday afternoon when he wasn't even making it 2.5 hours without needing the nebulizer again, we went to Urgent Care. Better there on a Sunday afternoon than sitting in an ER in the middle of the night. When we got there, his oxygen levels were at 94, and they said it was very good we came when we did. He couldn't even catch his breath. You know when you over exert yourself and it takes a minute to catch your breath - imagine that for 24 hours or more!

As I was sitting in the Urgent Care exam room, and Owen was doing yet another nebulizer treatment, it hit me. My. Son. Has. Asthma. I guess year after year I've prayed and hoped and hoped and prayed that it would go away. Many doctors and people said, "oh when someone has asthma this young, they usually outgrow it. Well he's nearly 5 1/2 now, and it is as bad as ever. For a moment I felt sad and scared. But then I got to the place I need to be as his mom. I need to get more educated on how to treat this so that we aren't in Urgent Care or the ER every few months. You hear the commercials "I'm Living With Asthma" and its time for my son to Live wonderfully even though he has asthma. I'd like to find information on ways to treat (maybe even cure?) his asthma so he doesn't have to be on medicines all the time. If someone happens to read this that has such information, I'd certainly appreciate it.

On top of this, my dear little girl who is 19 months, starting diving out of her crib. Yeah that's right, not crawling out, but literally diving-throwing herself, headfirst. Ironically she didn't even start walking until she was 17 months old, so to be so physically agile kind of amazes me, but due to other wake-up issues with our sons, I'm not ready to try to get her to stay in a bed. I'm not against co-sleeping one bit (in fact most nights one or both of our boys ends up in bed with us!), but she's just terrible to sleep with as she wiggles all over the place. She sleeps much better by herself too. So, in order to keep her from breaking her neck, I ran to Babies 'R Us this morning and purchased one of these:

She didn't fall asleep for her nap so easily, but she did, and being she's my third child, I'm an expert mom (yeah right!) and know the crying lasts for only a moment and she'll get used to it eventually. I'll take a picture soon because she looks so beautiful actually, like a princess in a canopy bed. Of course my boys are insanely jealous and now want bed tents! We're thinking about it - maybe that will get them to stay in their beds too!