Croup?? That's Bananas!

As many of you may know, Miss Charley hit a rough patch this weekend. We were enjoying a low key weekend at home and everything was going pretty smoothly. Happy baby, good eater, decent napper...all in all, nothing to complain about. I gave her a bottle around 4:30, followed by some bananas around 6:30. Charley is really starting to get a hang of the solid food thing and can't seem to get enough. Around 8:15 I tried to give her a bottle before bed and she simply wanted nothing to do with it. Rather than fight it, I decided to just lay her down...or should I say try to lay her down. She just couldn't seem to get herself comfortable and it was about an hour and a half before she actually fell asleep.

Fast forward to about 11:00...I woke up to a crying Charley and figured that she had to be hungry. After all, she hadn't had a bottle since 4:30. I tried to feed her and that just made things worse. It was then that I noticed that she was really breathing strangely. Even after I got her settled, she was really wheezy on inhalation. My initial thought was that she was just really worked up from crying and I didn't really think twice about it. However, because I'm paranoid, I brought her in to bed with us so that I could keep a closer eye on her. Well, the breathing just got worse...almost like she was gasping for air. We knew something was wrong, so we packed up and headed to the ER.

Let me tell you, if you want quick service in an ER just tell them that you have a baby with a heart condition in respiratory distress! We were whisked away to a room and Charley was stripped from her jammies and surrounded by people in no time!

I'll spare the details, but they gave her some steroids and a breathing treatment in the ER and then admitted us to the PICU overnight for observation. It was a LONG night. First off, Charley sleeps on her left side at night...same arm that they started her IV line it. Add that to the fact that she was hooked up for full cardiac monitoring with what felt like 100 wires, and you had one uncomfortable little lady. I think that she got maybe 3-4 hours of sleep total that night, with mom and dad only getting 1 or 2. Final diagnosis??? Croup.

Now, at the risk of sounding kinda crazy, I'll share my diagnosis. Hear me out.

Like I mentioned in the beginning of this post, Charley is LOVING solid foods. About a week ago we started experimenting with bananas. Around that same time I told Matt that her poopy diapers really looked like they did with the whole SOY debacle. I didn't really give it a second thought though and we moved on to sweet potatoes the following week with no issues. Saturday night was the first time that she has had bananas since.

She was totally asymptomatic until after the bananas.

She didn't have a "barky cough" that is croup by definition.

I totally think that she had an allergic reaction to bananas that caused her throat to swell. I'm even more convinced of this because ever since we came home she has been dealing with the same "detox"-like symptoms that she had with milk and soy. Her tummy churns. She cries when she poops. She just seems uncomfortable.

They can call it croup if they like, but I'm pretty sure that Charley won't be getting bananas again for a LONG LONG time.

She is doing much better today. I stayed home from work as I knew she would just be a terror at daycare (not to mention my need to catch up on sleep!) We had a rough start to the day, but she's napping now and seems to be feeling a little better. I even managed to get a big grin out of her. Hopefully we continue in this direction.