thankful

well, i guess we are lucky that we've had two kids going on six and four and we've never had to take them to the emergency room. i suppose there are many mothers that i know who have stood beside their child's bed and pretended that they had it all together. last night was scary as shit. the family has been sick, so when i was awakened by the girls, my immediate thought was that ryane had started vomiting. and, that the reason that both of them were upset was that it was on the other or something. the sound was loud, that is all that i knew. i shot up and it woke doug up from my quick movement. the girls ran in the room and turned on the light this time. rae was choking. it seemed like she had something lodged in her throat. i was scared to death. she was drooling everywhere. it was all over her. down her legs and body and she couldn't breathe. she was gasping for each breath and i was trying to keep it calm. doug was losing it and ryane was pacing around in her pj's. i will never forget the look on that babies face in my entire life. i thought she was choking to death. i started doing the heimlich maneuver and i couldn't get anything out. she was coughing and coughing. and it was so deep. i grabbed her throat and tried to move it around to see if i could get something out. nothing was working and it just was getting worse and worse by the minute. we tried to get her to take a drink and that didn't help either. so, we got clothes on both of them and started out of the door. rae had a meltdown when doug said the word "hospital." i could have killed him. she was a nervous wreck and i was trying to keep it together for everybody. doug went to the hospital in his pj's and tennis shoes. on a side note, hopefully they weren't paying attention that they were scrubs...so we got there and rae was terrified. doug rushed her straight in and i did the paperwork. i couldn't answer the questions appropriately. i was quite numb. ryane was saying how tired she was. by the time i was finished and got in there, the doctor told me that she had the croup and that he needed to give her steriods. i proclaimed "it's just croup." and he didn't like that very much. i thought she was dying and had something in her throat. i guess it just didn't come across the right way. but, there wasn't another way at that time. he put her on a breathing machine for about 45 minutes and that helped so much and the steriods seem to have done the trick. i kept reminding her how ryane had to do the same thing when she was a baby and that it wasn't going to hurt her. i finally got her to relax and when that happened she was fine with being there and the nurse helping her out. they were super nice and she just can't wait to tell the bus driver and her teacher!