Wisdom of the ages

Many parenting truths may have fallen by the wayside, but a child's innate ability to make a liar of you is alive and well.

Leaving Mim's BBQ last night, Elissa coughed a couple of times in an ominously croupy kind of way. I confidently told Mim that Elissa gets traditional, 4 or 5 day long croup - annoying but "at least I won't have to go to the hospital tonight." I should have covered Elissa's ears.

We gave her Nurofen when we got home and she went off to sleep fine. At 3am, she woke up with stridor, but she calmed down and her stridor stopped about half an hour later. "Following her usual pattern", I said to myself, "I would have looked like an idiot if I'd taken her to the hospital half an hour ago." However, I stayed in her room, just to make sure. At 5:30am she woke again, this time very distressed, with pronounced tugging in her chest. "Ok," I said, "we should give her some Redipred now." Only BOTH bottles were out of date. And so she made a liar of me. We were home again by 8am, dosed with Dexamethosone and armed with both a second dose, and a knowledge of the correct dosage (0.3mg per kg, so I that I can find this next time it happens). Now I just need to check that the dex we have is NOT out of date.