Oh Croup!

The baby is 7 months old and is finally asleep in her crib for the first time. Ever. We are in the living room watching The Voice, not sure how to use our new freedom when we hear a loud, hoarse cough on the monitor.

I jump up and run to the back bedroom, opening the door as quietly, and as quickly, as I can. It sounds like she’s choking. In a state of panic I call David to Come Quick! I pick her up from the crib, pat her back hard, and see flem bubble from her mouth. She barks a loud barking cough, sounding like a seal stranded on the shore. David quickly packs the diaper bag as I try to gain control of my emotions. I know I need to be calm in a time such as this, but my heart races with terror. I bounce the baby in my arms, trying to calm us both down. The more she cries, the more she coughs, and it looks as though she’s struggling to breathe.

We drive to the children’s hospital a few miles away. As we enter the huge parking garage, David grabs his employee ID from his wallet; it’s like a magic wand that allows us to park right by the entrance. By the time we get to the ER desk, the baby’s coughing has died down, but her head is burning up. I didn’t check her temperature, but I’m sure it’s well above normal. She appears to be breathing fine now, we tell the nurse, but we’d like someone to look at her to confirm.

We take a seat in the waiting room, the baby strapped to my chest in the Ergo, now dozing between small coughs. We’re terrified. I’ve never been to an ER in my entire life and the range of things that could be wrong with our baby girl runs through my mind.

They call us back to a room and take her vital signs. She has a fever of 103.5 but everything else looks okay. Her lungs sound a little strained but it’s nothing to worry about, the doctor says. It’s a bad case of croup, she tells us. Usually cool night air will stop the fit and that seems to be what happened tonight. They give the baby Tylenol to bring her fever down, steroids to help clear gunk from her lungs, and send us home with a prescription for antibiotics. The doctor’s final words are for us to get some sleep and I think she must not have kids of her own. What parent can sleep after a night like this?

It’s close to midnight by the time we get home, and I sit in the glider with the baby on my chest. I look over at the crib with a sense of animosity-it can stay empty forever, I think-and then I fall asleep.

***

We spent hours preparing the nursery before our first daughter was born. We painted the walls a deep dark green; a color that exuded calmness and serenity. We found a dresser that doubled as a changing table on the side of the road. David hand painted bunnies on the front doors to match the bedding we had chosen. With its delicate brown and green leaves and its tender young bunnies, it reminded me of The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

That nursery sat unused for six months, until we packed it up and moved to a different apartment. When we unloaded the nursery boxes I left them untouched for days. There was no need to unpack. The baby wouldn’t sleep in her own room anyway, no matter what we tried.

A few weeks after we moved into the new place, we unpacked the nursery boxes and painted the walls goldenrod yellow. The apartment had dismal lighting and yellow felt like a good way to brighten up the room. The changing table came with us, but we had quickly learned putting a baby on a table wasn’t the easiest way to change a diaper, so it was hardly used for more than storage.

We decided it was time to do something about our abysmal sleep. Our baby was 7 months old and all the books say sleep training is the best thing for everyone involved. Parents need sleep. Babies need to learn how to self-soothe; it’s an important skill, the experts said. It won’t take long-just a few days-and there are gentle ways to do it. We put the crib on the wall closest to the door so that if the baby did sleep in it, we could hear her midnight cries.

Then I went to a friend for advice. She had four kids of her own-two in their early teen years-so I knew she had walked this road before. She didn’t tell me what to do; good friends never do. If I wanted to sleep train this baby of mine, I probably wouldn’t be able to do it myself, she told me. Knowing my tender heart, she offered to do it for me. I told her I would think about it.

David and I talked and decided we’d start by just getting the baby to sleep in her crib for a few hours a night. So what if she couldn’t put herself to sleep? If she would sleep there instead of our bed, we could resume some normalcy of adult life. And here we are. The first night of success in this venture and we find ourselves in the ER, of all places. As a new mom, I couldn’t help but wonder: would things have been different if we had just let her sleep in our bed?

***

She had several other bouts of croup as a very young child and we now know that croup is most commonly caused by a virus. She likely would have had the attack that night no matter where she slept. But we never did sleep train that baby. Or the one that came next. There wasn’t a sleep training method that seemed right for us. As they turned into toddlers and preschoolers, we continued to lie next to them as they fell asleep. It became sacred space. The time when we heard their last assessments of the day and answered life’s big questions that always seemed to arise right when their heads hit the pillows.

I wish we had embraced these moments as precious ones a little sooner in our parenting journey. That baby was a year old before we embraced bedtime as something we would always do together. If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t spend time curating the perfect nursery. I wouldn’t buy fancy bedding or a crib. I wouldn’t stop and grab the changing table from the side of the road. I wouldn’t feel guilty about how my baby fell asleep. I would ignore the experts and listen to the voice inside my head saying my kids wouldn’t always need me next to them to fall asleep. That baby was a year old before we embraced bedtime as something we would always do together.

That baby is now nine, and after we’ve read together, talked about the day, and given her hugs and kisses, she falls asleep on her own. We’ve learned to embrace our bedtime routine as one filled with sacred space and holy moments. Babies grow up to be big kids who want to do things on their own. Even falling asleep.

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Originally published at https://www.soulmunchies.com on April 23, 2021.