Olivia's First Road Trip

The past couple of weeks have been very eventful for the Boulton clan. On Thursday April 29 Jeremy, Olivia, Allison and I drove from Salt Lake to St George for a wedding. I was a little nervous because the longest Olivia has ever been in a car is an hour, but she was fabulous. I was shocked at how easy it was.

We stayed with my Aunt and Uncle in St George, and when we got there, there were a lot of people coming and going preparing for the wedding the next day. Olivia was a bit shy and reticent at first, but once she realized people would laugh at her, she hammed it up.

On Friday Olivia woke up with a bit of a cough, but was otherwise fine. The wedding was fantastic, and it was so much fun to be with family in the sun!

By the time the reception came around, Olivia's cough was quite a bit worse, and the poor girl wasn't too happy, as you can see in the following picture.

We were able to get her to bed without too much of a stuggle, though, and I was hopeful that she would sleep well because of how busy the day was. Unfortunately, she woke up around midnight and was having a hard time breathing. We rushed her to the nearby emergency room, where she was diagnosed with croup.

She received a breathing treatment, which was horrible! She screamed the entire time (about 5 minutes, the longest 5 minutes of my life!), and ended up with this desperate, wailing cry. I can still hear it in my head, but there just aren't the words to describe it. The treatment in and of itself wasn't bad, but I think she was just so tired, and the mask made kind of a loud noise, that she was just not going to tolerate it. Right as she was finishing the treatment, she threw up all ove the mask, herself, and her dear mother. It took a good 5 minutes after to get her to calm down. Before she was released, she was given some oral steroids, which she took like a champ!

This is a video of Olivia playing with the pulse oximeter in the ER prior to her breathing treatment.

We were only at the ER for a couple of hours, but it felt like forever. We drove around for a while to let Olivia fall sound asleep in her car seat. We let her sleep in her car seat the rest of the night, and she slept like a rock (as did her mom and dad)!

The next week was difficult as Olivia recovered from croup. We had several rough nights full of coughing fits and crying. The croup led to an ear infection, which Olivia handled really well. Actually, she handles illness in general really well, so when she is really uncomfortable, I know that she is really sick. And the poor girl was really uncomfortable with croup. She has since recovered, and is back to her usual, adorable self!