The evil cough strikes again

Last week, Grant woke up in the middle of the night acting like he could hardly breathe. It was awful. Matt and I were seriously considering the E.R., when suddenly Grant coughed up whole bunch of fluid and just like that, poof, sounded totally fine again. So I put him to bed right in his little portable crib right next to me, and we went back to sleep. Well, he went back to sleep. I slept fitfully all night, listening to him breathe smoothly and effortlessly with the occasional sniffle and cough, freaked out that somehow he'd start to not breath. Of course, that didn't happen. He was fine.

Since then, both Cooper and Grant came down with a mild cold followed by a nasty amount of mucus, coughing, and what I think are sore throats (tough to tell). I really just chalked it up to the usual winter sick kid nastiness until I ran into a kid (and his dad) that go to our daycare. Little guy Bob (not his real name) was looking a tad haggard and suddenly started coughing the same disgusting and painful cough that Cooper and Grant have had for about a week. I sort of laughed in mutual parental sympathy and said, "Ugh, that's the same thing I hear in our house" and his dad looked very serious. "Really? Because we spent Friday night in the E.R. with him. Turns out he has RSV- highly contagious- and most likely all the kids at daycare already have it, too. I hear that some of the other guys at daycare are really sick."

Sigh. So that explains the cough, the phlegm, the poor napping, the perennial nose yuck. They both have RSV. And it explains the weird fluid incident with Grant- RSV is famous for making kids breathe poorly because of excess mucus buildup, especially little babies.

As I write this, during naptime, I can hear them coughing. Bleh. At least now I know why. And on that note, I'm gonna go wash my hands.