(09/19/2008) On the morning of Genevieve’s 4-month check-up, she did a strange choking cough sort of thing where she turned a little red and took a few seconds to recover. I didn’t think much of it, but at the appointment I did mention it. We agreed that it was probably something new in the air or just some excess drool. If it continued, we were to put a humidifier in Genevieve’s room at night. Fine. After the mechanics of the appointment (length, weight, checking reflexes, checking neck strength, etc.) we proceeded to the very un-fun vaccination part. As always, my happy baby gave me the “What have I done to you? What did I do to deserve this pain and why aren’t you stopping them?” look when her smile suddenly disappeared at the first stick. I hate that look that babies give you during shots to make you feel like you’ve betrayed them. We got calmed down to the tune of “You are My Sunshine” and did some nursing and were on our way.
In the next week the cough got worse in intensity and frequency. We called the nurse line and the general feeling was that it was excess drool and some babies are more prone to this than others. Not wanting to seem like a crazy, scared, first-time parent I accepted this reasoning even though we weren’t first-time parents and we are actually pretty laid back when it comes to our kids. However, another week goes by and things are getting worse. We went back in to the doctor because by this time, every coughing fit was a scary event. Genevieve would run out of air and her nose, eyes, and eventually her whole face would turn red. We couldn’t leave her alone in a room for fear that she actually would stop breathing. We started putting her to sleep in our room in her bouncy chair and taking turns through the night running over to pick her up during a coughing fit. Back to the appointment, again it’s “something in the air or excess drool from teething.” At this point she’d been drooling for two months without choking and we knew this was not normal. Tristan NEVER had this sort of coughing fit as a symptom of teething. The tricky part is that she didn’t seem like she felt bad, she was in good spirits, did not have a fever or runny nose and her chest was clear. This was a Friday and the doctor did do a pertussis swab and told me that if it was negative, I wouldn’t hear from them and if it was positive, they would call us on Monday.
We heard nothing on Monday so we assumed the swab was negative. A friend suggested that maybe it was reflux so I kept that possibility in my back pocket and proceeded to wait and see. The following Thursday night was horrible. Genevieve was waking up (and in turn waking us up) every 15 minutes or so, always with a scary coughing fit that would last longer than the previous one and where it would take her longer and longer to breathe again. I’m no medical professional so not only am I laying awake praying that she keeps breathing, I’m also praying that she doesn’t have any lasting effects from a lack of oxygen. As soon as I could, I called the doctor’s office in the morning and made another appointment for that afternoon. Around 11 am a nurse from the Health Department called me to say that Genevieve had pertussis and the whole family needed to be treated and repeatedly telling me that she needed medical attention. The tone in her voice was such that she was accusing us of being indifferent to the seriousness of the issue. My response to her was basically “Thank God it came back positive and we know what is wrong with this child!” We are not crazy parents and we were right that this was not normal. It was a complicated issue to get medication for James and me, but that’s another story. I took Tristan to the afternoon appointment so we could get a prescription for him as well. When we got there, the doctor told us to go to the Children’s Hospital. They would be waiting for us and we already had a room number. She wanted to wait until the appointment to tell me this so she “didn’t scare me over the phone.” I still don’t know why I wasn’t called at the beginning of the week with this info… We left the doctor’s office and went home to gather some stuff and headed for the hospital. The whole stay was somewhat uneventful aside from trying to draw blood – that was horrible and I’m not a squeamish person. She was stuck in several different places and has apparently inherited my difficult-to-find, rolling veins. They were going to do all kinds of tests until I piped up and said that all I was told by our doctor was that we were going to get medication (the same meds we would have been given to administer at home, so no IV was necessary) and be observed. At this the doctor was surprised and went to check with the head doctor. They cancelled all additional tests, thank goodness. As is typical with kids, Genevieve did not have as many coughing fits through the night as she’d been having at home, however, her monitors did go off quite often. That night was the first time I had actually seen very apparent striations down Genevieve’s face. It only lasted a few seconds but boy was it weird. The next morning James and Tristan came up to bring me breakfast and check on the status. We thought we would be there at least one more night, if not until Monday, since we were told she’d need to be monitored for 48 hours from the time the first meds were given (and we were there for 6 hours the previous night before we even got any medication). We were presently surprised to be released Saturday afternoon.
It turns out the incubation period for pertussis is 21 days and Genevieve could have picked this up from being around someone with a seemingly harmless cough, although we couldn’t remember anyone we’d been around coughing. To our immune systems, this would have been a non-issue but Genevieve’s body interpreted the germs as pertussis. She’ll be getting the third shot of the series at her 6 month appointment. Apparently, the cases reported are increasing and the medical community is adding a pertussis booster to tetanus shots in hopes to eventually reach a large portion of the adult community. Two weeks before this, James went to the ER for stitches and actually received the new booster-containing tetanus shot.
I spent some time with Tristan at the Butterfly Wall, while James stayed in the room with Genevieve. This is a pretty cool wall made up of squares that turn colors if you touch them and all together make it appear as if butterflies are flying across the whole wall. Tristan wasn’t quite strong enough to push the squares hard enough to make the wall change colors, but Mommy was. We spent a good deal of time there to get him out of the room and give him a chance to stretch his legs. As Ann and Jim are in the Grandparents Club at the hospital, we’d been given an opportunity to tour the new hospital months earlier…too bad we weren’t able to make that tour.
Thanks Honey for encouraging me to bring a pillow because those hospital pillows would have been really uncomfy!
I don't look sick Mommy!
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