The Croup

About five years ago we had newborn twins and a mild case of germaphobia. Those little newborns had premature immune systems, and we knew we couldn’t handle two sick babies at once. So, we sanitized our hands and didn’t invite many people over for fear they’d bring in meningitis or those tummy bugs that turn your intestines inside out.
But we were also part of a small group Bible study, and you can only go to everyone else’s house for dinner so many times before it really is your turn to host. Everyone else made homemade stews and ribs. We ordered pizza because did I mention the newborn twins?
A nice family in the small group came over with their five-year-old who was coughing like a seal. “He has croup,” the mom explained as the kid coughed around our house. M and I just stared. “Umm, what? Croup? Like the illness from the 1800s?”
The other parents were like, “Oh, yeah, croup, that’s too bad. Anyway, anything to eat besides pizza?”
M and I were still staring. “Croup? Like smallpox? Like the Bubonic plague? Have we just stepped into a Little House on the Prairie episode?”
I don’t have many memories of cleaning the house (because I’m not great at it), but I vividly remember scrubbing the house with Lysol after everyone left. “Croup?” we kept asking each other. “Shouldn’t the kid be in the hospital with that cough?”
Fast forward a year to this week exactly. Sam and Elisabeth were now sturdy one-year-olds, and we weren’t nearly as concerned about germs. M flew to Orlando for a conference while my m-i-l came to Houston to help me with the kids. In the middle of the night, I heard a seal barking in the twins’ room. I ran in to find Sam. He was choking so violently, I was convinced he had swallowed his paci, and it was lodged in his throat. The coughing woke up my m-i-l, and we both knew we had to call the doctor’s emergency line.
As soon as the nurse heard Sam’s cough, she said, “Oh, that’s just croup. Sit next to a hot shower with him.”
Which surprised me since I really expected her to dispatch an ambulance when she heard that hacking cough. But I tried the shower method.
Here’s the thing about sitting next to a steaming shower with a miserable, hacking toddler on your lap: it’s awful. Something about the haziness of the steam and the fact it’s hotter than heck, and your sick child is looking at you, wondering why in the world you don’t just get in the shower. Plus, you are kind of worried about the environment or the water bill or whatever else since it’s so counterintuitive to just listen to a shower run.
Here’s the other thing about the shower: it works. It opens up the kid’s throat, so he can breathe a bit better. This is why moms don’t really freak out about croup. If your kid is susceptible to croup, you know exactly what it is and exactly what to do.
I mean, except when the shower trick doesn’t work, which has happened to us at least three times and we’ve ended up in the ER or the doctor’s office. Because when the shower doesn’t work, croup is as scary as smallpox. Your kid can’t breathe and knows it.
All this to tell you that M has been out of town this week at that same conference he goes to every year. And to tell you this is also the week of Houston’s first cold snap, so it’s also the week one of our kids always comes down with croup.
Wednesday night it was Nate. As soon as I heard the telltale middle-of-the-night barking cough, I was in the bathroom, running the shower, praying I wouldn’t be dragging four kids to the ER. And, praise the Lord, the shower trick worked. It was only an hour of the hot, steamy, shower running and my toddler crying and me thanking God for the miracles of modern medicine. I also asked God why we still didn’t have a solution for croup more advanced than what Laura Ingalls would have done.
And the next day, when I stopped by the gym to write, Nate coughed.
“Sorry,”I told the childcare worker. “He had croup last night.”
And not one mom batted an eye.