It’s been a long few days, but I think Lucy is starting to turn the corner. She was diagnosed with RSV on Thursday afternoon, and a few hours later, Joe sent me a text while I was reading the 5 p.m. news and said he thought her breathing was getting worse and that she was pulling in on the sides of her belly even more, so we headed to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite. Luckily, the hospital has several satellite locations, so we were able to get in and out of one much faster than we would have had we gone to the main hospital.
Lucy’s oxygen level was 100 percent, which was great, and she didn’t have a fever. The doctor gave us a nebulizer and told us to do treatments with albuterol 3-4 times a day, which we’ve been doing for the last two days. She’s also been on an oral steroid since Thursday afternoon. We were told the albuterol might cause her to tweak, and boy has she been tweaking. This afternoon, her feet and arms have been twitching like crazy. It’s kind of freaky yet kind of humorous. Our baby’s getting high.
We’ve had quite the time with her breathing treatments. She’s not a fan of having a mask put over her face with mist streaming in at her, but she’s been pretty good about it. Sure, she’s put up a fight at times, but there have been a few times when she’s slept through the entire treatment. They try to make the nebulizers kid-friendly by making the masks look like animals. Lucy’s were shaped like a dinosaur and a fish.
This morning, she napped for a little bit after her breathing treatment, which was nice.
And, of course, with the sickness comes extra fussiness. She’s been crying constantly and will only stop if we hold her. The minute we put her down, she starts to cry. She also hasn’t been napping much during the day, but she slept for 14 hours on Friday night. We ended up waking her up this morning around 10 to get started with her meds.
We’ve noticed Lucy sounding a bit more rattley today, which we were told means the albuterol probably is starting to loosen everything up. She’s been coughing more, too, which also supposedly means the medicine is working. We’re hoping we’ll start really seeing improvements by Monday. I’m ready for her to start feeling better. I hate seeing her like this. The good news is that apparently, once a baby has had RSV, it won’t get it again. And, next year she’ll be 1 during RSV season, which means it’s not as serious. We have two more doctor’s visits scheduled for next week, and then hopefully that will be it until her 4-month checkup.
