Croup d'état

It was Terms of Endearment around here last night. Not in the "Give my daughter the shot!" sense, but the scene when the baby comes down with the croup and they are sitting in a steamy bathroom with a barking child.

At around one a.m. I was wakened very suddenly by Finn who was himself wakened very suddenly by wheezing and a cough that could only be described as a bark. He sounded like a seal. As this is not the circus (yet), I was alarmed. A number of things ran through my mind:

1. I am alone, and Pete has the car
2. He has his pertussis shots, but what if they did not work? Has herd immunity gone down enough that he could have caught whooping cough? This sounds like the cough they describe in the symptoms and in the anecdotes that parents have told.
3. What if his breathing gets labored to the point where it seems he is really having trouble getting oxygen? Do I call an ambulance? Would that be covered?
4. The Internet is down, and I can't consult mayoclinic.com

In the end, after the whole forty five seconds the above steps took, I called my mom. She's a nurse. I put us on speaker phone and let her listen. She told us to go into the bathroom and run the hot water. I called Pete and told him not to dawdle after his gig; he was almost home anyway. Finn and I went into the bathroom. Babywhumpus was upset because he thought he was getting a bath, and he was not completely awake, but we got the bathroom all steamy in minutes. Small spaces have their benefits.

He settled down, and we watched some Winnie the Pooh while we waited for the Tylenol to take hold, and we all went to bed and slept until (later that) morning. It was a scary moment with a fortunately unexciting ending.