Saturday, May 9, 2009

Scariest Mommy Moment!

Friday night I had my scariest mommy moment! I will start with a side story. As I was picking up my son from his babysitter's, she received a call from another mom to tell her that she was running late. Normally this would not be a problem for Tracey. But on this particular night, Tracey's son had a soccer game in SW Fort Worth and they had to be there in 35 minutes. I told her I would take Jacob to meet his mommy. It truly was not a problem. So we did a quick switch and got the extra car seat in my car. Now I am only telling this story, because as I was telling my mom about it later, I made the comment, "you know sometimes you just do something out of the way for someone because you never know when you will need the help yourself." Little did I know that I would need the help in about an hour!
So an hour later, Riley, Alex, and I are shopping at Kohl's. I was looking for a swimsuit to wear when I take my 4th graders to camp. Riley just kept aggravating Alex, so I picked her up and was carrying her around while looking through the racks. The next thing I know I hear Alex cry out. I look at her and she has a hanger in her mouth, so I start to pull it. But it won't come out. Then I realize that the hanger is jammed down into the soft tissue underneath her tongue. I start screaming "Oh my god!" Now I'm crying, Alex is crying, and Riley is starting to cry. Quickly I had several ladies coming to help me. This one lady very calmly tries to remove the hanger while the rest of us attempt to keep Alex's head still and her hands away from the hanger. All the while this sickening feeling is becoming worse in my stomach. She quickly decides that she cannot do this, and 911 is called. Very quickly, the Keller paramedics arrive. So now they are suggesting that I call Randy, who is of course on his way home but still 2 hours from home. So I tried to call my mom & dad. 5 dropped calls and a now frantic mom later, I am able to tell her what happened and tell them to head to the hospital. Eventually one of the paramedics is able to remove the stuck hanger from her precious little mouth. Amazingly it is hardly bleeding. So they ask if I want to take the ambulance to the hospital. My loving friends have all told me that unless you are dying, you do not take an ambulance. So I declined the offer and drove the 3 of us to the Cook's Children Urgent Care Clinic. This was suggested that it would probably be faster than the hospital downtown. Back to Alex, as soon as the hanger was removed, she amazingly quit crying. She is one tough little girl. On the way to the clinic, she actually fell asleep. So after we arrived at the clinic, triage determined that we were an emergency and quickly got us to the back. They looked at the nice round hole in her mouth and decided that it would heal best on its own. So they flushed it out with saline and gave us an antibiotic. Then came the fun part. They instructed us to not give her any baby food for the next 3-4 days. Are you kidding??? No, they were not.
So, by now it is about 8:30pm and Alex is starving. I fixed her a bottle, then came the next set back. She took one suck and let a wail. The sucking hurt. So no baby food, and sucking a bottle hurts! Lovely! The nurse quickly brought in some motrin and gave Alex her first popsicle. She loved it. Surprise, surprise!
Now it is Sunday night and Alex is doing much better, although still real clingy. But being the bad mommy that I feel like right now, I have to leave for camp tomorrow. Yes, I will be 2 hours away in Van, TX at Sky Ranch Camp with my fourth graders for 3 whole days! This is going to be a really long trip for this mommy!

2 comments:

ChristyA said...

Oh my goodness! I am glad she is doing ok! Poor baby, who would have thought that a hanger could do that. I hope that she is feeling better and eating a little better. I am sure it was a long weekend. I hope you have fun at camp!

Brandie said...

Poor baby!!! That's so scary!! I'm glad she's ok!