Just hangin’ with Robbie today. He’s on day 2 of a scary-sounding croupy cough. He’s almost 4 and I thought croup was just for babies, but apparently not! Two nights ago he woke up crying hard and, well, barking. If you’ve never heard the sound it is pretty impressive. And terrifying.

It was midnight and I’d been asleep for maybe an hour. I’m barely awake or coherent as I stumble down to the boys’ bedroom. Chip is awake too and gets royally pissed when I take Robbie out and leave him behind.

This is the first time one of my kids had a cough like this and I didn’t really know what to do. I couldn’t yet tell if the cough was hurting him, so the first thing I did was give him some ibuprophen. I also hoped the syrup would soothe his throat some. Then I found some expectorant and gave that to him as well. Those plus some kids vapo-rub did the trick and he was back asleep in about an hour.

I have to say, though, that the things I did were basically the result of luck. My biggest fear at the time was that he was having some sort of asthmatic or allergic reaction to something. If I’d had any kid benadryl that’s what I would have given him. Never mind that he’d been asleep for hours first and that he’d never had either problem before.

I find it so hard to be coherent sometimes when I suddenly have to get up in the night for the kids. Am I the only one stumbling around like a maniac? Of course after the commotion dies down I’m fully awake for at least an hour after that. My body clearly has this all backwards!