As a daycare teacher and mother of a preschooler, I was used to a familiar hacking chorus, so I wasn’t concerned when my three-year-old came home from daycare with a cough. I assumed he had a cold and some post-nasal drip (when excess mucus in the nose drips into the throat)—annoying, but not serious—and at worst he would have trouble falling asleep. I was wrong. Later that night, my husband and I started to hear the telltale seal bark that suggests croup coming over the baby monitor. We went in to check on him and found his breathing was laboured and his cough was near-constant. When he began to drool, a sign of difficulty swallowing and airway constriction in croup in kids, we decided to take him to the hospital.

Keywords - Parenting