Hi, my name is Nic....

And I'm a spaz.

With the birth of my second child, I smugly thought I had joined the ranks of veteran parent. I'd learned the lessons: kids cry, kids fall, kids get the sniffles, kids pick stuff up off the floor and eat it, kids live. I got it. Or so I thought.

R is sick. Cough, fever, no voice, the whole nine yards. As a result, I have totally wigged out. I don't even recognize myself; I'm like a crazy lady. I manically checked on her all night last night (when I wasn't sleeping next to her in bed), and have spent $375 on doctors and meds the last two days. I feel like a new parent, a rookie with no clue. In my defense, I have been blessed with relatively healthy children (Baby R's first few weeks nonwithstanding) so I haven't dealt with anything other than the sniffles. When R started in with a croup cough last night, I flipped. I made DH go buy a new cool mist humidifier at 1am, I took her temperature non-stop (thank God for the temporal thermometer so she didn't wake up), I woke her up to give her ibuprofen, and every time she whimpered, I came flying up the stairs. She called for me, I climbed in bed with her and listened to her breathe. I even took her pulse. Seriously. I know what you're thinking and it's okay to say it: Cuckooooooo. I don't think I slept more than 3 hours the entire night. When she got up this morning, she sounded even worse. I took her to the urgent care clinic (aka Waste of Medical Resources) for the 2nd day in a row on suspicion of croup - yesterday I was told there was nothing wrong with her...FAIL! - and the doctor diagnosed her with bronchitis instead. By nap time, she was back to sounding like complete shit and once again I found myself lurking outside her door like a stalker. DH assured me she was fine and to stop overreacting, but I couldn't help it. I even went online and listened to audio clips and youtube videos of kids with stridor and croup. Nutso, right?? After talking to a very nice pediatric nurse (for 30 minutes, the woman was a saint) that was on-call for my doctor, she decided that it did sound like R had croup and advised me what to keep my eye out for. Long story short, I wound up in the ER with her.

And guess what??? She has croup. Take that Priority Care. Too bad I can't get back the $90 they cost me between copays and meds. R is on Prednisone now and I'm still busy camping out near her. It's going to be a loooong night.