Deja Vu

We spent four days and nights in hospital last week while Charlotte dealt with a bout of Bronchiolitis (wiki link). Her respiration rate doubled and she wound up on oxygen and a fluid drip for a couple of days. Nothing to do with her previous troubles, more of a something that can happen in winter thing. Both of us caught her bug but it only gave us colds.

Along the way it gave my parents and sisters a chance to retell their stories of my stays in hospital as a small child with asthma. My parents spent many long days and nights at my bedside and now I was following in their footsteps with my own child. I grew up hating hospitals, and have only really gotten used to them as an adult. They are strange places at night, simultaneously still and busy, quiet and noisy. Fitful and unsettled sleep is interrupted by strangers coming and going, to be remembered as vague shapes and shadows, and the beeping and other noises of equipment. Overriding your comfort needs is tending the sick child who is your reason for being in this place. If you are lucky they will sleep, and you will only be woken every couple of hours by the beeping of the drip needing resetting. If you are unlucky like Fi was the first night, the need for cuddles and settling will override your need for sleep, and the most you can hope for is that she will eventually settle and not keep the other occupants of the room awake.

On my night in Charlotte slept mostly, and I only had to deal with the drip and one of the other parents snoring. We got our own quiet isolation room after a couple of days while the virus ran its course, until Charlotte was released on Thursday pretty much good as new. We on the other hand were tired and rundown, and coming down with colds.

Four days is better than three weeks though. Charlotte remains awesome. I marvel daily at my luck in being able to call her my daughter, even when she is being a complete baggage. Baggage phases are not often though, and here she is in complete sleeping non baggage mode.