The Happy Crouper

Yesterday at about noon Oliver started barking like a seal. It didn't dawn on me that I should be too worried right away, but in the evening his breathing got quite labored. We fortunately have a 24 hour line where we can get in touch with nurses and doctors from our clinic. With a couple tries at the "foggy bathroom" treatment that didn't help his breathing the doctor advised us to take him into the emergency room. Even with that advisement it felt like a tough decision. I wonder if once you have two or three kids this decision becomes run-of-the-mill? He only got about an hour and a half of sleep total before 3:30am when he fell asleep in the hospital, but was really pleasant. This morning the lack of sleep caught up with him and I had one cranky baby! We've been taking it easy and feeling bad that Paul has to use his tired brain to debug software today.
Oliver liked chewing on the nebulizer they used for his breathing treatment, so the nurse let him keep it. After the breathing treatment they gave him an oral steroid that helps decrease the swelling in the airways. Today he sounds much better and is able to sleep without waking himself up.