Poison Control Centre - Wed, Jan 6, 2010

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!).

Monday Morning - January 5, 2010

So the baby (Breeze)  was more interested in Ginger the Cat this morning than her oatmeal cereal (but not enough to stop her from removing her bib repeatedly) and definitely not more than her sippy cup of water. The result? an unfed sopping wet baby and wasted bowl of cereal. Then my preschooler soaked her head with water (nothing out of the ordinary there) so her bangs stay off her face. I offered her a barrett which she allowed me to put in her hair but it wasn't working, so I tried blow drying her hair to keep it off her face. Not overly successful, back to the "bed head" which is what you and I would call a head band, but somewhere along the line she considered her hair to be too messy and had her first meltdown of the morning.

The husband, Hunter,  is back to work after the holidays, the drywall men are here and the furnace man is expected any time now. Just as the baby was nodding off, they arrived, as announced by my dogs to the entire neighbourhood - strike one for the nap. Second try for the nap and that is when the drywall men decided to start their banging ( they're at the point of sanding today so what the heck are they banging anyway?) - strike two.

I am looking forward to tomorrow, after the holidays the baby and I will have the house to ourselves. Drywall men will finally be gone, it's been a few weeks now that they have lived in my basement. My preschooler is back to daycare. The house will be quiet but not clean. With the entire basement cleared for drywalling, we are tripping over toys, coats, boxes, books, tools, you name it, it's up here. I am not complaining though, this is a dream come true for me to finally have the basement renovations underway! More space.... at least until we fill it with all those toys, coats, boxes, books, and tools!