NOTE: I’ve noticed a lot of people stumble across this post by Googling some variation of “my baby coughs until blue”. If this is happening to your child, please don’t rely on Google for advice! Call a doctor. There was never any question that my daughter needed medical attention, but better safe than sorry.
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This is Autumn, in the hospital at about 12 weeks old. I can almost chuckle at this picture today, because she looks so pissed off. But I sure wasn’t laughing at the time.
Tomorrow is her first birthday. She’s the daughter I never thought I’d have, because after my son was born twelve years ago, I said that was more than enough for me. I held to that vow all those years without budging, but someone obviously had other plans. :)
I spent pretty much the whole pregnancy in a state of shock, and to tell the honest truth, I wasn’t fully on board with the whole thing until they put her in my arms for the first time. Instantly, I was in love, but just as I had after my son was born, I grappled those first few weeks with a terrible case of the baby blues. Bless her, she was patient with her rusty new mommy (who could scarcely even remember having a baby), and slowly we adjusted to each other.
And things were good. Until around the middle of January, when she came down with what seemed to be a little cold. I worried and fretted, because she didn’t want to eat. I took her for her two month check-up and got her scheduled vaccinations. To her pediatrician, it just looked like a little cold, too. Runny nose, cough, congestion. No biggie.
But that very night, her cough turned…horrific. I can’t really describe it. She got caught in a coughing spasm so severe, she couldn’t seem to draw her next breath. She did this twice throughout the night. The next day, January 23, was a Friday. I was off work because my husband and I were going to see AC/DC in Dallas that night.
We never made that trip.
At around eleven a.m., she had another coughing spasm so violent she turned blue in the face. Once it was over and she could breathe again, she went limp as if from sheer exhaustion. Frantic, I called her doctor, who told me to go straight to the ER because it might be RSV. I called my husband, and we headed to the hospital.
They didn’t do much, and of course she was just the picture of health while we were there. They checked her lungs (all clear), gave her a breathing treatment anyway, and sent us home saying she was most likely choking on drainage. RSV test was negative. I was told to suction her out with a bulb syringe if she had another coughing fit. And, naturally, twenty minutes after we left the hospital, I had to do just that. Not that it helped.
That was probably the worst weekend of my entire life. She kept having the paroxysms every hour or so, and I was reluctant to go back to the hospital because the same thing would probably only happen again: I’d get treated like a hysterical mom and sent home. But Monday I called her pediatrician again, and she wanted to see her right away.
Autumn was kind enough to have a coughing fit that had all the nurses in the doctor’s office freaking out (oh, they were calm and collected on the exterior, but told me later she was FREAKING them out, lol). Her pediatrician called it the second she witnessed the cough. “You might have pertussis, little girl.” I went cold all over. She admitted her to the hospital.
But the damnedest thing happened. Her RSV test came back positive. And so did her mycoplasma pneumonia test. So we were told for the duration of that hospital stay that’s what we were dealing with. I was doubtful, especially when it seemed to stump everyone that her lungs were so clear. I did some research of my own (what else is there to do when you’re stuck at the hospital with a baby?), and became increasingly convinced they were wrong, that her doctor had called it from the start.
They wouldn’t let us take her home until she went 24 hours without a cyanotic episode–meaning no more “blue fits”. After five long days, she managed to make it that long without one, but it was far from over. She had one on the way home; I had to pull over and jerk her out of her car seat. It’s a miracle we didn’t both get killed. I was just about at the end of my rope. But we thought we could deal with it, that surely it was winding down.
No such luck. A couple of days later I received a call from the Texas Department of Health informing me that, yep, my daughter had whooping cough. A day or so after that, we rushed her back to her doctor’s office and landed back in the hospital for another week. RSV was negative again (figures). We were dealing with pertussis.
She had her very worst day before she took a turn for the better. That day, my mother-in-law had to jam her finger down her throat to get her out of a spasm. I watched her cough until she turned blue down to her toes, kicking and fighting and struggling to draw another breath, and not for the first time wondered if my precious baby might not see her first birthday. Or even her fourth month. I cannot describe the helplessness, the devastation, of watching your child fight to breathe. I won’t even try. In my mind, I can still see her little purple feet digging frantically into the mattress as the nurse and I held her and tried to suction out her throat. I’ll never forget that image as long as I live.
She could have died. She could have had brain damage. But I learned one thing about my daughter through it all: that little girl is a trouper. She pulled through. And if one good thing came out of it, I learned not to sweat the small stuff so much. When you feel like you have to save your kid’s life every hour or so for three straight weeks, bumps and bruises and colds seem pretty inconsequential.
Her pediatrician often says she wishes she had a video of one of her coughing fits to show to parents who refuse to vaccinate. I’m not here to get on a soapbox, but to celebrate that my little girl is still alive. I will say this: don’t let anyone tell you this disease is not a big deal. Or that once a baby is a year old you don’t have to worry about it anymore. That may or may not be true, but that rationalizing excludes the poor defenseless babies, like mine, who ARE under a year old. Mine was eleven weeks old. She shouldn’t have had to go through that.
I know just where she caught it: from her then eleven-year-old brother. It must have been going around the school. All he had was a cough. But that same cough nearly killed my baby.
He’d had all his shots, but it was news to me that the pertussis vaccine wears off over the years. So, if you *do* vaccinate your kids, please keep that in mind. And if you don’t, please be very careful, at least. I had no idea this disease was still that prevalent, that it would be so easy for my baby to catch it. I’ve found that a lot of people don’t know it.
So here’s to my little biohazard on her first birthday. She’s sweet, happy and hilarious, and while there was a time when I was pregnant and freaked out and I couldn’t really imagine life with a new baby, now I couldn’t possibly imagine it without her.
Happy birthday, baby girl! Mommy loves you!
