Dealing with Infant RSV: Our Story

Respiratory syncytial virus, RSV, is one of the more common viruses, and it causes cold-like symptoms that usually go away within about a week... that is for adults. For little babies like my son, the symptoms are much more severe and the complications can be serious.

On Super Bowl Sunday, February 4, 2007, our son, Vincent, had just turned six months old. Throughout the afternoon, Vinny had not quite been acting like himself. Normally a rather happy baby, he was incredibly fussy on this day. He also couldn't keep anything down. After he had been throwing up for hours, I noticed that he felt hot. We took his temperature and found that it was almost 104 degrees! My husband and I immediately decided to take Vinny to the hospital.

As the remnants of our Super Bowl party guests helped to clean up, we gathered a few things and headed off to the hospital. With emergency rooms being what they are these days, it was a very long night. They couldn't see Vinny right away. When they took his temperature in triage, it was at 104.3 degrees. They gave him some tylenol and left us to sit... for hours. Eventually they brought us back to see Vinny, but they didn't even have a room for us. We sat on a stretcher in a hallway, trying to calm Vinny. He had been throwing up everything we fed him for hours and was crying, most likely from hunger. His breathing sounded strained, and I was really beginning to worry.

This unfortunately turned out to be one of the worst doctor experiences I had ever had in my entire life. Although my infant was struggling to breathe, burning up, and screaming at the top of his lungs as I rocked him back and forth, the doctor proceeded to lecture me about how I should have breastfed longer, and how he probably wouldn't even be sick if I had. When the doctor left us alone (as alone as an ER hallway gets), I collapsed into tears.