Gray Hair

Pretty certain I have sprouted some of these with all of the worrying I've been doing. I've managed to internalize most of it up until yesterday. I started crying on three separate occassions. Landen having these breathing problems, multiple doctor's visits and then the fact that he just wouldn't eat yesterday made the tears erupt. One time, while I was laying on the bed with him and started crying, he thought this was pretty funny. He loves water so I'm sure he was thinking to himself, "whoa, mom can make water come out of her eyes too". He giggled, flashed a cheesy smile, coughed, then started to "wipe" my tears away. This made me smile, and gave me a slight reassurance that everything will be okay. I prayed and prayed for him to eat and I know I was receiving a few other prayers from family and friends and around 10:30 pm he finally ate a hearty 5 ounces (totaling 17 all day yesterday, normal is about 30) Before that is was like pulling teeth to try and get him to eat anything. He'd scream, turn his head away, purse his lips, and throw his head back. Today has been a bit better but not great. I've been able to get 9.5 ounces down him and 2 oz. of pears. He wants nothing to do with rice cereal and gags and turns his head. His cough is still really bad and has more of a hoarseness to it which makes me think it's turning into Croup, but who knows. He is still wheezing too and because of this, we were at the doctor again yesterday for 1 1/2 hours and he received a chest x-ray. By the way, watching your 6 month old get strapped to a big plastic tube with his arms up by his head and his head tightly strapped in is one of the hardest things to watch. I know I can't complain too much because I know a lot of parents that have had to go through way worse things, but for me anyways, this was really hard. I had to tell myself to stay strong for him. He just had this horrified look on his little face and was screaming and crying and looking at me as if to say "Mom! Why aren't you taking me out of here!". Awful. For curious minds, this is what it looks like (however, imagine your baby the one strapped in, screaming, crying and all I can do is hold his little hands with my fingers while this contraption rotates):

They found a little fluid in the lungs, but nothing too alarming. He was prescribed Prednisone in addition to the albuterol nebulizer treatments and Tamiflu. He's only received one steroid treatment so far and I continue to hook him up to Mr. Penguin every 4 hours. I've also been taking turns sitting in a steamy bathroom with him and bundling him up and exposing him to the cold air (was told from the doc this would help- so far it hasn't.) It's so weird because you look at the kid and it just appears that nothing is wrong (minus the wheezing and coughing and not eating). He's happy and has a ton of built up energy. I haven't allowed him to play too rough (e.g. Jumperoo) because of the additional strain it would cause on his lungs. We've got a tough little guy on our hands.

Thank you for all the prayers, please keep them coming! We need all we can get.

Here's what I do to try and distract Landen from yanking out the nebulizer nuk: