I called the Poison Control Centre for the first time in my life yesterday. Usually my husband gives the baby her Vitamin D drops in the nursery, but last night she was going to sleep as I rocked her in the living room, so he gave them to her there. I left to take her to her crib and I guess my husband left the bottle on the end table and went to do something in the kitchen. A little while later I told my preschooler (Storm) it was bed time, looking back I remember she had her hands over her face and I asked her why she was covering her eyes (she's done this before). No response (and no big deal I thought - boy was I wrong!). I went to look in on the baby again who was crying and indicated to my husband that it was time for Storm to go to bed.
A little while later he came into the nursery looking for her, and then did the rounds - our bedroom, her bedroom, the living room. This was not a good sign, whenever she's hiding somewhere she's up to no good. Suddenly I hear him boom "what are you doing? that's medicine, you're going to get sick"! My stomach lurched, what had I left out - my rolaids? She has been into those before, then it dawned on me, the Vitamin D drops! As I rocked the baby, I assessed the situation - I knew the bottle was only a quarter full and they were baby drops. I was worried but not panicked and then wondered what my husband was doing in response to this - it had become awfully quiet in the living room.
With baby asleep, I wandered into the kitchen to find him searching online for the company that made the Vitamin D drops. There's nothing about overdosing he says. I suggest calling Poison Control but he scoffs and tells me Vitamin D is not poison. I bit my lip to avoid a hasty and ugly response and undeterred I walk over to the phone where I have the number posted. My husband then starts calling out the phone number he's found on the bottle of Vitamin D, okay, I'll play along - it rings through but of course there's no answer after 8 o'clock in the evening! So thus I make the call to Poison Control - I was very impressed with the staff member's cool and collected demeanor. I felt pretty calm and collected myself I have to say, it was afterall a small amount of Vit D, I would have been a basket case had it been bleach or some other household nasty (although I apparently did drink bleach when I was a toddler and survived with no apparent ill effects). She was going to be fine, all we were told to do was to stop her multivitamins for two weeks which contained Vitamin D. Phew! I couldn't help smiling in victory at my husband - not only had I taken control of the situation and made the right call, Storm was going to be fine (my husband has worked in the emergency response field so I guess I have this expectation that he will respond to any and all "emergencies" with level headedness and cool efficiency).
I heard Hunter tell Storm that mummy was on the phone with the hospital to make sure she was going to be okay and not to touch medicine ever again. A little while later, Storm came over to me and said she was sorry she drank her little sister's medicine, she hadn't meant to (hmmmm). She was so sincere and afterall, we* were the ones who'd left it where she could find it. A good wake up call for us though - we are very viligant about keeping medicines, cleaners, etc locked up and out of the way but it only takes one small bout of absentmindedness to undo all that viligance.
(* Okay, it wasn't me who left it out, it was him, and I could have scolded and blamed but I took the high road. No doubt my husband felt bad enough without me harassing him. Tempting though!).
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