Didn’t get a whole heap of sleep last night (not caused by possible apnea problem). My baby has come down with croup! I sort of thought croup was like scarlet fever and TB, only caught if you dressed in nineteenth century clothes and said “ye” and “thou” a lot.

The day before last we thought ‘uh oh, she’s coming down with a cold’ so we kept her home from kindy yesterday. She kept complaining of a really sore throat and had a bit of a gurgle when she breathed, so I just thought it was a chesty cold, but then last evening she went downhill *real* quick. We called the nurses line (not much help, advice was: “can’t diagnose her over the phone, take her to the hospital to get looked at”) then we called a locum doctor but he couldn’t say what time he would be able to get to her, and after an hour she was getting really bad so for the first time in my life I rang the magical 000 number and asked for the ambulance. (For American readers, that’s the Australian equivalent of 911; for UK readers, that’s the equivalent of 999).

At that stage I didn’t know it was croup, having never experienced anyone with croup before, and thought she may be having an asthma attack with her cold, as my brother and I get asthma so we’re a bit touchy with respiratory lurgys. As soon as one of the ambulance men stepped onto the porch and heard her coughing inside, he said “sounds like croup”. They put the oxygen mask and whizzed her off to the hospital (okay whizz is a slight exaggeration, it was 40kms per hour). At first when the ambo said (in a Northern Irish, Belfast, accent - they’re everywhere these Irishmen) “we’re going to take you for a trip to the hospital okay?” she scrunched up her face and shook her head poor love.

But she didn’t put up much of a protest when we said she had to go - a sure sign she was sick, as when Yasmin doesn’t want to do something she says: “wait, wait wait” and then tries to talk her way out of it.I went in the ambulance with her to the hospital where she was seen in the emergency part and confirmed that she had croup. They gave her gloopy medicine for kids, which was a steroid, and some paracetamol. Then they watched her for an hour or so and the attending came and looked at her, and told us to give her ibuprofen and paracetamol regularly and keep her rested, plenty of fluids, bring her back if she gets bad again etc.

The medicine really worked as she began to perk up again. We knew this when she gravely told her father “there is no playing in the hospital” when he tried to tease her and tell her she seemed to have six fingers on one hand.

Alhamdulillah, I am so grateful to God for the health service. When it’s yourself that gets crook you can sort of soldier on until limbs start dropping off, but when it’s your baby you just want the world to stop and fix them - which is what they did for us, may Allah reward them.