thankful

This evening I am thankful to be home with my family. Collin is sleeping soundly in his bed, and Dan is upstairs rocking Ronan in hopes of him sleeping in his own bed tonight. For the last 2 nights he has slept in mommy and daddy's arms, not leaving that spot for more than a few minutes at a time. It's been a long couple of days.
Let me rewind.
Last week Collin and I developed a cough. Concerned for Collin I took him to the doctor on Wednesday to learn that it was just a virus and that there wasn't much we could do. He was given an oral stimulant to help open his airway so he could breathe at night which seemed to work really well. That same evening Ronan developed a cough as well. Thursday morning the poor baby woke up without a voice. Assuming that he had just cought what Collin and I had, I gave him Tylenol and extra love and figured it would just pass. Friday was pretty much the same, as was Saturday morning. We spent Saturday afternoon at my parents' house with all of my mom's siblings. It was great hanging out with everyone and seeing my aunt and uncle from Texas whom I hadn't seen in exactly 1 year. I fed Ronan around 12:30 and then he took a short nap. When he woke up he ate some Puffs and cuddled in with Grammy to fall asleep again. He slept, and slept, and slept. As I was holding him I noticed that he felt warm, but couldn't tell if it was because he had been being held for so long, or if he was getting a fever. He started to stir but didn't fully wake up. I checked his head and my aunt agreed that he felt warm, so we packed up our stuff and headed home. Sure enough, he had a temp of about 101. I ran a cool bath and Ronan and I hopped in. (Collin actually jumped in too because he saw the sweet vapor bubbles and didn't want to miss out. The entire time we were in the bath, Ronan slept. I poured cold water over his back, and he slept. After about 20 minutes or so, I was cold so we got out and headed to the basement. I tried to wake him up to feed him since it had been a good 5 hours since he had last eaten. He wouldn't wake up. At this point I noticed that his breathing seemed rather quick. Even in his sleep his breathing did not slow down. We monitored his temp for a while, gave him Tylenol, and when his temp had not gone down 30 minutes after the Tylenol (in fact it went up, 104 under the arm) we called Dan's parents and headed to the emergency room at St. Francis. Of course on the way to the hospital his fever broke, but his breathing was still quick and shallow. We seen immediately in the ER where they quickly put him on oxygen and started taking blood and sticking him in every possible place. I cried. It's really hard to sit back and watch your baby being hooked to monitors not knowing why. They told us that his oxygen levels were really low, took and x-ray of his chest, and admitted us to the pediatric ICU. His x-ray came back showing tha the had pneumonia in his lungs and breathing treatments began. He was given IV fluids but was not allowed to eat because of his resperatory levels.
I'll skip all the details in between but for the next several hours we sat in a very uncomfortable rocking chair, tried not to trip over wires and tubes and took turns taking naps on a super uncomfortable pull out couch. At midnight his reperatory levels were stable and I was finally able to feed him, and he was finally awake enough to eat.
On Sunday morning they came and did another x-ray which looked worse only because of the added fluids. Around noon we were able to take him off of the oxygen as he was doing well without, and were informed that we would be moved to the regular pediatric floor.
Around 6:00 pm we were finally moved. The room was much larger, had it's own bathroom and shower, a bed, and a rocking chair that didn't make my hiney go numb. At this point Ronan's only wire was taped to his toe to check his oxygen levels. We again took turns sleeping and rocking. At 7:00am we were awoken by the Dr. informing us that we were going to be discharged with meds and a nebulizer to continue breathing treatments. At 11:30am, we finally were discharged.
Now, we are home. Ronan has been playing on the floor with his brother, smiling, laughing, and is now sleeping in his own bed. My sweet Collin is asleep in his own bed again (he really missed Ronan. He asked about Ronan several times while we were gone, but did not ask about mommyu once) and Dan and I are thankful. Thankful that we have 2 amazing children. Thankful that we had instinct enough to know when something was really wrong. Thankful for the amazing team at St. Francis who took such good care of our baby boy. Thankful to God for watching over our baby, and bringing us all home safely.