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Childhood bumps and out of hours visits

For a 3 year old, N seems to have (touch wood) escaped all the terrible childhood scrapes, illnesses and hospital emergency visits that you quite often imagine you’ll be experiencing. Yes, he’s had a lot of bumps – the worst was tripping up a step at nursery and falling into the open patio door – exactly hitting the corner of the door frame diagonally across his face and nose – how he managed the precision on that, we’ll never know.

But he’s never had to have plasters.

He’s had a bit of a grazed knee, but no blood streaming down.

He’s had a wrist caught in the car door (ouch, did I feel bad about that, although I still don’t know what his hand was doing through to the passenger door).

And he’s had lots of bumps to the head.

But not one has caused any issues – a bit of Aloe Gelly on bumps and grazes, we refer to it at magic gelly. A kiss better and a cuddle, and a few cold compresses at nursery, and he’s been fine. He obviously doesn’t take after me, as I was backwards and forwards to hospital with childhood bumps, eye scratches, buttons up nose incidents.

We’ve only had one hospital visit, but blimey it was scary at the time.

N had been fine in the day, then went to bed. He’d not had a cough or cold, but had taken himself off to our bed. We moved him back into his when we went to bed, but then woke at 11.30 to him hacking and barking away. He was getting agitated and crying because his cough was hurting and we couldn’t sooth him. I tried to give him a drink to get him to calm down and sooth his throat, but he wouldn’t calm down, until eventually we took him downstairs. His heart was beating like anything and he was really raspy in his breathing. I just thought it was croup, but not having heard it before, plus the fact he wouldn’t settle which is unlike him.

He had another coughing episode, so we stood him at the open door to get some fresher air in, while I rang 111 to get some advice. I presumed they’d say, yes it was likely to be croup and therefore just give me some advice on what to do about it. They said keep him warm, which goes against what lots of people I know have said, where they’ve found keeping a room cool has helped. And if he had a temperature then some calpol to help. Then they booked him an appointment at out of hours straight away.

Well, that then causes you to wonder how bad it really is, when you think it’s just something that’s come on suddenly and as long as N is calmed down he’ll probably be ok. So we bundled him off – good job I said it would take 30 minutes to get into town, as getting 3 people up and dressed and organised is a lot harder in the middle of the night than as part of a usual routine.

N thought it was great. By this time he was calmer, and was just interested in why we were going out at night. And why Daddy was with us, because he never really comes out with us anywhere. N seemed to have got it into his head that we were going out to the pub. At midnight. No idea where he got that idea!

I’ve been to out of hours in the day time before, but the usual door was shut, so we had the excitement of the security guard having to let us in. I couldn’t believe the place was empty. The reception guy was twiddling his thumbs and the doctor saw us straight away. Of course, like so many occasions, when you need to show or explain something to a doctor, the cough had gone. No more coughing once we were outside. Everything was checked, all was fine. Yes, it was suspected croup.

Bizarrely that was it. One wake up of serious coughing, then a couple of bouts a few minutes later. Then once N was up that was it. Even the next day when he woke up, there was no sign of a cough. I was expecting that it might have then turned into a cold, but even that didn’t arrive. So it was the shortest bout of croup I’d heard of. I felt terrible for wasting a doctor’s time, although thankfully they weren’t busy. I think it it had happened in the day time it wouldn’t have been quite as scary, and we’d have brushed it off. But add in waking up from sleep to hear that, and it’s not pleasant.

N was just disappointed that we weren’t in fact going to the pub for a meal.

Are your children always in the wars or have you managed to escape lots of hospital visits?

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9 Comments

  1. We’ve been very lucky. Our oldest hasn’t had to go at all! The 5yo has been a few times, he cut his eye when we was about 18mo and we were worried it needed a stitch, it didn’t! And, he’s had a couple of stomach pain trips to A&E in the middle of the night, all okay thankfully (appendix suspected). So far with the wee girl, nothing, touch wood 🙂

  2. Bless him he sounded very excited about the trip at night :). Z fell out of bed one night when he was 8 months old. I’d taken him out of his crib and placed him in our bed whilst I made his milk. It was the day he’s learned to crawl so he decided to follow me and fell smack bang on the wooden floor. He was bleeding from his nose so we ended up rushing to hospital. He was so chirpy by the time we got there and was playing with the doctors like nothing happened. We felt so daft but it was so scary at the time!

    1. BLood’s definitely a scary thing. They do usually say that they’d rather see children than not, so if there’s any concern then take them in.

  3. LP broke her leg at 15 months and it was one of the most awful experiences of my life. I never want to have to visit the hospital with children ever again! x

    1. When they’re that young, it must be awful, as they’re harder to calm and can’t explain what’s wrong. Fingers crossed that’s it for you guys

  4. We have been to A&E so many times over the years I should have shares in the car park! The cough Åland chest problems are quite scary though so it is worth getting them checked out. I hope you continue to not have many visits there.

    1. Yes, fingers crossed.

      I know with my online birthboard friends and amongst NCT, there’ve been a few children who’ve been in and out for various breathing, cough etc issues. Must be horrible having to keep an eye on things, and worry that each time there’s a slight cough, it might end up being a hospital visit. V lucky here.

  5. We had a visit to the doctors a couple of weeks ago as my son had had bad throat and side of neck for a few days and someone mentioned it might be mumps (even though he’s had MMR). My son had been complaining quite a bit so you can imagine my embarrassment when the Dr asked him about it & he said it only actually hurt when he thought of it. Aargh!

    1. That’s kids for you. Typical. It’s why I rarely believe N when he says something hurts as most of the time he just says something as he thinks about it, in the same way as your son!

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