LM's coughing and I'm swamped

Today I thought LM was getting better. I had tons of time yesterday to get some work done while LM was at daycare, and today she did quite well (it’s not a daycare day today). But tonight, oh my frustratedness! I put her to bed around 7:30pm, and she started coughing. Now, I ask myself, is she coughing because of asthma or because her throat’s dry and she has a cough? Do I know? No. Does she know? Maybe, but she can’t tell me. So I lay down next to her and listened to her cough for two hours. Two hours! Finally she coughed herself awake and crawled off the bed into the laundry basket, started crying (understandably), and puked. Luckily I hadn’t fed her much after dinner, so there wasn’t much to puke up. This is ridiculous. So ridiculous it’s actually laughable, in an awful way.

I decided that whether or not it was asthma I’d have to try the Xopinex, so around 10:30pm I finally gave her a treatment. She’s back asleep now and coughing occasionally and I have no idea what’s going on. I also don’t know whether she’ll be able to go to daycare tomorrow, and I have to go to the dentist to get a crown on my tooth. I also need to talk to a couple people in my lab up in OR, and we have a paper the postdoc is trying to get out that I need to review ASAP.

And LM has a doctor’s appt on Thurs with the asthma doctor, but she hates doctors. She puked at our last visit ‘cause she cried so hard (quick gag reflex). Then she decided that any time we went into a small room, she must be at the doctor’s, so she’d freak out. That meant I couldn’t buy a pair of pants ‘cause she thought the fitting room was a waiting room and started screaming her lungs out. I finally convinced her today that it was actually fun to try on clothes (I really need a pair of pants, for goodness sake!), after I had her try on the clothes that I was trying on. That was quite hilarious and kicked her out of the screaming mode. But after we go to the doctor again on Thurs, who knows what she’ll decide to do in retaliation.

The other problem is that it’s not really an option to stay up all night getting caught up at work, ‘cause then I’m really really sleep deprived and am liable to freak out at any little thing LM does. So I have to get my minimum sleep. And, of course, one never knows what the night will hold. Will LM sleep, meaning I can sleep? Will she puke several times? Have a horrible asthma attack, requiring treatments every 4 hrs and sleepless listening for breathing problems in between?

Where’s the magic wand? I don’t know. How will I manage a trip to OR with all this going on? I have no idea. At the moment, I’m hoping to go up for a couple days, leaving LM here with my aunt and uncle. Not a great prospect, since they’re quite busy and I don’t know whether or not LM will be well. What if she gets another asthma attack and my aunt has to stay up all night? Let’s not even go there.

Wish me luck!