Down with the Sickness

My poor sweet baby boy Braden has gotten his first real illness. Not that this is the first time he has had a cough or runny nose but he has spent the first almost 6 months of his life pretty healthy, that is until now. Thursday night he went to bed seemingly perfectly fine and then woke up about 11pm and could barley breath he was so stuffed up. And since then it really hasn't gotten any better and by Saturday he was almost losing his voice so that's when I decided that I would bring him into the doctor this morning. I knew I would probably be told that it was just a cold and we had to let it "run it's course" but the poor little thing has been so miserable that I wanted to make sure there was nothing else along with it like an ear infection or something like that. I had to put my own mind at ease if anything. So after a few minutes of poking and looking and listening we were given the diagnosis....just a case of RSV. From the sound of things our more than wonderful (have I mentioned how much we love our pediatrician? I can't help it, he's great) doctor said that he should only be getting better from now on. I'm hoping he's feeling much better by the weekend, with a little Tylenol and a ton of mommy love he should be good as new pretty soon. What amazes me is as sick as the little guy sounds he still is full of smiles!

2 things we got out of this whole thing are:

1.) Life changes drastically from child number one to child number two. Matt and I realized that this was our first trip to the doctor with Braden that wasn't a regular check-up. Amazing, I think so! By the time Alexa was 6 months old we had not only made several unexpected trips to our regular doctor but also urgent care, the ER and even a trip to the hospital in Hawaii. I'm not saying that there was nothing wrong with her at all these visits, however a couple of them could have possibly been avoided....maybe. Anyway we thought the fact that we haven't brought Braden in before today was pretty impressive. I must say though, I think things have been so different because I have been home with the kids since Braden was born and he hasn't been subjected to the nasty world of germs at a daycare. This is a good and bad thing I guess, someday when he has to go out into the real world he could be in for a rude awakening.

2.) Matt says I can no longer visit and type of medical internet website, ever again. He has actually been saying this for some time but apparently now he's serious. I do tend to go to the extreme when anything seems to be wrong with anyone. The second someone starts coughing, finds a bump or something hurts I am online trying to find out what is wrong. The problem with this is that all these sites tell you the simplest thing that could be happening all the way to the most extreme thing. And being that I tend to worry WAY too much about everything I usually go right for the worst case scenario. So every other week someone in our house is close to dying from some sort of disease that no one can even pronunciate. I am working on this and trying not to worry too much before we actually find out what is wrong, but man is it hard! Until then I am not going to give up my medical websites but I am only going to use them for informative reasons not for an actual diagnosis.