All I Want for Christmas is...My First Big Illness?

Poor Peanut is sick. Like really sick. For the first time in her little life...poor sweetie.

It started on Christmas Eve. I put her to bed and she went to bed like usual. Then about an hour later she woke up and started playing around in her crib. Then like a half an hour after that she just lost it. Started screaming. I was trying to...um...prepare for Santa's arrival, if you will, and I couldn't just sit and hold her. So I tried everything. I tried rocking, I tried nursing, I tried it all. Every time she went back in her bed she was up and SCREAMING. This was not usual for my child. She's a good little sleeper. She ended up in my bed with me and she dozed on and off all night long. But she couldn't breathe. She was choking on her own snot. So she was either snoring like a buzz saw or else just rattle breathing so loud that I barely slept. She kept waking up and crying and reaching out for me. I honestly got a combined sleep of about two hours for the entire night. I kept thinking, "The first time she gets sick and does this...the very first time she is up ALL NIGHT...and it has to be Christmas? Really?" It was horrible.

When The Boy woke up on Christmas morning she woke up too, with a fever of 101 degrees. She was pitiful. I had to use the bulb syringe on her at least 10 times throughout the day. She tried to be in good spirits, she really did. She smiled and she sat on the ground and played with her packages but every few minutes she just wanted me to hold her. She just wanted her Mommy. She felt like crap. I feel really bad for her...

(Other than that, Christmas was lovely...The Boy was so damn sweet and cute the whole day...I will do another post on the wonderful that was Christmas...)

And so it has gone since. She is okay during the day with her nose running down her face and not being able to breathe at all. But at night. Oh, the nights. Gone are my days of nursing her at 7:30 and then putting her in her crib only to see her the next morning at 6:30ish. She SCREAMS when I put her down. And she doesn't stop. I am not exaggerating. It is horrible. She stops crying the minute I pick her up and hold her and rock her, but if I put her down or GOD FORBID put her in her bed, she loses it. And she keeps crying. It's terrible. I can sometimes get her to fall asleep when I am rocking her in the rocking chair and then put her down but she will inevitably wake up within a couple of hours. It's like she is in horrible pain and she can't sleep through it.

What I have tried: I have her mattress elevated by a pillow so she isn't laying flat. I have the humidifier going on her room anytime she is in there. I have been giving her tylenol every four hours or so for the aches and yuckiness. And like I said, every time before she eats or when she gets up I use the bulb syringe on her (and there is tons of green crappy stuff coming out). After three nights of this I broke down today and took her to an Urgent Care place to see if she had an ear infection. Nope. Ears are clear. So is her chest and her throat looks fine. Sounds like a garden variety cold. But she is miserable! And today? The last two times I tried to nurse her she couldn't because she couldn't breathe. She would pull off, take a couple of breaths and then go back. Then after doing that a couple of times she would just pull off and scream. She wouldn't go back near the boob at all. These last two feedings I have ended up giving her a bottle of pumped milk because she can sit straight up and drink the bottle and therefore breathe better. (She sucks down the bottle so she clearly still wants her milk). But now I am freaked out that she is going to stop nursing. Please tell me she will be able to breathe better in a couple of days and will go back to nursing, right? Right? (Cause I am pumping what should have been her before-bedtime-nursing right now and I am NOT happy about it). My poor sweetie... Anything I am missing internets? Can I do anything else?

Here she is on Christmas Day trying to be a trooper amongst all of her loot...