The bad mom syndrome

I know most of us parents often feel like we're not doing the best job we can, and there even some moments when we feel we're doing a very bad job. I had one of those moments last weekend.

On Saturday evening, we all noticed that Hannah seemed to be dragging a little and we were thinking she was probably coming down with yet another cold/cough. By bedtime, she was coughing and wheezing and didn't look too good. I sent her off to bed thinking she would probably be better by morning. She was very excited to be involved in the children's program at church on Sunday. She had memorized her part, she was brave and ready to talk into the microphone. She woke up around 2 am coughing pretty badly again, but I went in to give her some water and sit with her for a minute, and she was instantly asleep again. But she was even wheezing in her sleep. Well, it can't be that bad if she can sleep, right?

She woke up again less than an hour later still struggling to breathe. I started using all my tricks. Steamy bathroom, rocking in the rocking chair (yes she is pretty big for this, but it's a good way to keep her upright, and yes my legs did fall asleep), she was still having problems, so I even tried the instant croup fix which worked on her as a baby, and on Garrett as a 5 yr. old--I took her outside to the cold night air. Nothing worked. Finally, I held her in my lap as I searched the internet for what might be the problem. She fell asleep again, so I laid her on the couch and I laid next to her. She continued to wheeze in her sleep, but again, she WAS asleep. So again, I thought, it can't be that bad. She wasn't running a fever. So I dozed next to her. She was pretty restless.

At about 6:30 am, I woke up John and made him take my place while I went back to bed to get a little sleep. When I came down about an hour later, she still looked horrible, and she was awake. The first thing she said to me was "I guess I can't be in the program" with such a sad wheezy little voice. So I called our doctor's on call service, hoping to bring her in around 8 or 9 because I knew they had clinic hours on Sundays. The doctor didn't even call me back until 9:30. He asked me two or three questions and then said to take her to the ER. I said, "Shouldn't I just take her to the clinic?" And he said "She needs immediate treatment to help her breathe." So I left the boys with Denise to get ready for church, I picked up John who was already at church for leadership meetings, and we took Hannah to the ER. She fell asleep again.

We didn't have to wait AT ALL at the ER. They took us immediately back and the first thing they did was check her oxygen saturation, and it was 87. If any of you don't know about sats, that is VERY BAD. When I saw that, I just started crying like crazy, hiding my face from Hannah. I can't believe I let her go ALL NIGHT like this. I should have brought her in 10 hours earlier! I collected myself pretty quickly (I like to think), and helped them get a nebulizer mask with oxygen on her. There were a million doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, and I don't know who else, that came in and listened to her lungs and all of them exclaimed at how bad she sounded. The doctor said it was an extremely severe asthma attack. The nebulizer had albuterol, and then they gave her an oral liquid prednisolone. She wasn't really responding. They said if the couldn't get her a little more stable, they would have to admit her to the ICU. Then she threw up the prednisolone. So they decided to put in an IV, give her the prednisolone through there, and admit her to the ICU. She looked horrible. And scared, and didn't know what was going on.

We finally went to the ICU around 1 pm. She had been on the continuous nebulizer the whole time (except while traveling to the ICU). She looked a little better, but she had so many things sticking out of her. . .the oxygen meter on a finger, the IV in her arm, the blood pressure cuff on the other arm, the mask on her face, and three wires to her chest that measured her heart rate and respiration rate. I wish I had taken a picture, but obviously that was the last thing on my mind. By this time, she was pretty stable, but still obviously needed the continuous treatment. She had that until 6 pm. Eight hours! And then they gave her a ten minute treatment every hour until about midnight. In between, they had her on the oxygen going into her nose, which she HATED. She kept taking it out while I wasn't looking. I hate it too--I always try to refuse oxygen while I'm birthing but they always slip it on while I'm busy. Finally, I asked the nurses to keep it off and see how her oxygen was. They said, "I'm sure she'll need it while she's sleeping." But she didn't, hooray!

On Sunday evening, a bunch of Hannah's friends from church came to visit her, and they even brought presents that would help distract her. She wasn't really ready for reading or coloring, but she was feeling well enough to talk a little and listen to them tell about how the program went, and how they missed her. She had perked up a lot while they were there. After they left, I tried to settle her in to sleep. However, the meds they were giving her made her jittery and sweaty and not sleepy at all. We watched one more movie, then she finally fell asleep. Of course someone was constantly coming in to listen to her breathing, or to give her a treatment, or talk to me about her progress. This was at the rate of about two people per hour until about 1 am, when they changed her status from ICU to "floor status" which meant they could check her less often. So the rate slowed to one person per hour. Obviously, we got little sleep. Hannah is a very light sleeper anyway, so this was pretty horrible. Every time she was awakened, she would ask me questions and was being all chatty. When she finally would get back to sleep, 20 minutes later she was awakened again. Oh what a night! She woke up for good after her 5 am treatment. She was excited to look at her new books and coloring pages.

John took Monday off from work, saw Garrett off to school, took Kevin over to a friend's, then came to the hospital. I went home to sleep. The doctors said Hannah could probably come home that night. They had changed her treatments to every two hours, then to every three hours, then four. They took off all her monitors except the oxygen. They FINALLY took out the IV. Then they said she could come home. I was very nervous that they were handing over her care to me. I don't know anything about asthma, or her medications. But they taught me how to give her an inhaler, and said I didn't need a nebulizer at this point, and maybe this was just an isolated incident and she won't have any more asthma attacks. We can hope.

Anyway, we're home now and Hannah's gone to school. She seems fine, except she still coughs off and on. They said coughing is good though, it gets the phlegm out. Here is a picture of her on Monday morning. She looks great, doesn't she? Of course they had to tape the iv pretty forcefully so she wouldn't keep knocking it out.


If any of you have advice, I would love to hear it. I know I'm not a bad Mom, so don't worry about telling me that. We all just feel like that sometimes.