to you OP. This is such a horrible thing to go through. Every year at this time Facebook memories reminds me of our awful experience with this - there were no longterm effects fortunately but at the time it was awful.
DT2 had been in nicu for 8 weeks and had been home about 48 hours when he started getting sick. Then he was suddenly floppy and unresponsive and we called an ambulance. They told us it was bronchiolitis and it would get worse before it got better but his o2 levels were fine so we could take him home and come back when it got worse.
We stayed up in shifts watching him (and DT1 who was also sick but not as badly). A few days later we had to go to a nicu check up and when they put him on the o2 monitor his o2 levels were in the 70s and they had to call an ambulance to take him over the road.
We spent 11 hideous nights in HDU. When he wasn’t getting better after five more days they figured out it was actually whooping cough but they couldn’t do anything about that either. The HDU beds had a constant stream of bronch babies, but none were in anywhere near as long as us. All of them were fine after a few days of medical support with breathing, restricting milk intake etc.
His breathing recession never went away and they figured out things were being complicated by enlarged adenoids. We also didn’t know at the time that he had a string of other medical issues. At the time he only had one other diagnosis. But in terms of the breathing issues, once we came home he never had any other problems - quite a few of the mums I met in hospital have sadly had to go back in multiple times, and it’s awful for everyone but not anything to worry about.
The one longer term problem was that the stay completely tanked my milk supply - I’d been pumping for both twins since they were born and was up to about 1200ml per day. But the lack of sleep (I had to stay 24/7 but had no bed, just the world’s worst recliner), lack of proper food, fewer opportunities to pump and the stress meant it dropped to 300ml per day and never went back up, even pumping 12x per day which I did until they were 7 months when I quit. So if you are breastfeeding or pumping and you want to continue, do try to make sure you get some rest and proper meals, and pump often if you can’t feed directly (which is likely as they’ll probably restrict milk intake until breathing improves).
I know this is absolutely awful (we had to spend the night in HDU for some tests a while ago and it brought it all flooding back) but it will pass and hopefully it will be a one off. Hang in there