Disclaimer: This is not medical advice, just my journey through whooping cough. Please seek medical attention for whooping cough
There it is. The dreadful diagnosis. Your 3 month old baby has whooping cough. I glance over at her and I feel my throat tightening. "What is there to do?" I ask. I am told it has to run it's course, and there was NO treatment. They recommend antibiotics. I remember that the doctor on Sunday told us is was too late for the antibiotics at this point. He mentioned that it would only protect others from catching it, if the cough was indeed whooping cough. I sigh and pick my baby up. "Maybe they wrong," I think.
I start researching. A friend recommends that I look up the vitamin C protocol by Suzanne Humphries. Another sends me the FDA page on antibiotics. It says that it helps if it's administered before the child has the cough. Too late.
Suddenly I hear a cough. My baby turns blue. I turn her away from me, head forward leaning to get her to spit out the mucus accumulating in her mouth. Her little body shakes violently. She turns grey and becomes limp. I panic. My oldest panics. She gasps and throws up all over herself, myself, and the floor. Finally! She breaths! I put on her fleece suit and buckle her in to her car seat. My son drives and on the way I call the ER. Normal whooping cough, they say. As long as she doesn't stay blue, she should be ok. Nothing is okay. I'm terrified and fear for her life. I call her doctor and they say the same thing. We turn around.
I am stunned. Stunned that I'm supposed to sit by while my baby suffers. Stunned that there's no protocol my doctors can give me. Stunned that they won't take her in.
The needed vitamin C is only available over an hour away from our house. Mit husband tag teams with a dear friend of ours to get it. As soon as I get my hands on it, I mix it in some breast milk and try syringe feeding her. I find out that my daughter has spitting-medicine-no-matter-how-skillfully-inserted-superpowers. The only way to get the vitamin C in to her is by measuring her recommended doses, and keeping it in a small bowl in which I have to dip my nipple in the middle of a nursing session, so she swallows it.
The cough sounds terrible. She still struggles to get rid of the mucus. Most of the night she is woken up every 30 minutes by the need to cough. She whoops when inhaling. Thankfully she no longer turns blue. Her little body is cuddled up in my arms as I rock and nurse her all night long. Finally the cough spaces out in the morning hours.
Check back to see how we are doing!
