1-800-222-1222

Are you having a flashback? Deja-vu perhaps? Like you've seen the title to this post before on my blog? No worries my friends, this is the 2nd time (no wait- the 3rd?) that we've had to call poison control. THIS time it was not on Maeve though... on HENRY. Yup- I'm sure you're thinking "How the heck did Henry get into something?" We all remember Maeve eating the air freshener plug in thing at the age of one... or taking a bite of Ryan's deodorant... but exactly HOW did Henry get his claws on something? Let me entertain you for a second (or a minute...)

Both of our kids have some icky colds right now (runny noses, coughs, that overall miserable look) and I just started feeling sick myself last night. I went to bed feeling super congested, coughing and with a sore throat. I had given Maeve "Triaminic" YES I am one of those moms that gives their 2 year old cough medicine- it was half the dose (1 tsp) AND approved by her doc (so really.... I don't wanna hear it!:) I had taken tylenol PM and was still feeling like junk. So when Henry woke up at midnight to eat, and was struggling with the sniffles and a really horrible cough, I kicked Ryan awake and asked him to change Henry's diaper and get him some tylenol.

Ryan brought Henry back, all swaddled, changed and with the medicine dropper in his hand. Even as tired and sick as I was feeling, I noticed something was up with it- the meds leftover in the dropper were red- not purple, like his INFANT tylenol should be. Here's how our conversation went:

Me: "Why are you using that dropper and why is it red?"

Ryan: "You told me to give him tylenol."

Me: "Yeah- his tylenol is purple and that's not the dropper that comes in the bottle."

Ryan: "Oh well it's motrin I think."

Me: "No, all of our motrin is the dye free kind... not red. What the heck did you give him?"

Ryan: "Let me check..."

Me: in my mind...("holy bleeeeep. Bleeep. Bleeep.")

Ryan: "It was childrens tylenol, told you!"

Me: "CHILDRENS tylenol- as in for CHILDREN- like Maeve! Not infant tylenol!! HOLY CRAP HOW MUCH DID YOU GIVE HIM???"

Ryan: "ummm a dropper full?"

Me: "That's two teaspoons! Call poison control."

Ryan: "Whoops. Okay."


So at 1 AM or so, we both were standing in the kitchen, reading the tiny print on the bottle of childrens tylenol, and waiting for the poison control lady to calculate his weight and the amount he received. After about 5 minutes she "cleared" us and we let out a sigh of relief. I KNOW it would be hard to overdose on tylenol but Henry's only 10 weeks old! MY GOSH- I was thinking he was going to go into liver failure or something. The PC lady took our name and Henry's name (in my sleep deprived, sick state, I was thinking "Woah are they going to report us or something???") and then I remembered that no, they don't report you, they send you a magnet with a skull and cross bones on it with the number to poison control- like we don't have it memorized by now...


ohhhhhhh geeesh. Anyways how am I going to make it through today? Here's a hint:




a lot of it. a lot.

1-800-222-1222

AKA Poison Control Center... Yup. First call we've had to make since Maeve was born. SO this morning I was sweeping in the kitchen/mud room area, and I had shut all the doors so Maeve was limited to the hallway and the living room, which is open to the kitchen, so basically as long as Maeve wasn't in the hallway I could see her. And if she did wander down the hallway, all the doors were shut. Anyways, I was sweeping away and poking my head in every time I'd go past the living room. Maeve was playing with some books... I could hear her jabbering away and pulling them off the shelves. It couldn't have been more than 30 seconds or so, but the next thing I know she is standing in front of me holding on of those glade plug in air fresheners. She was spitting loads of bubbles and I leaned down quick and grabbed the air freshener from her and smelled her mouth- apples and cinnamon. SHOOOOOOOOOOT! I started examining the thing figuring out how the heck she got it in her mouth. Luckily she had not figured out how to open the container, but she did suck on the spongy absorber thing that is in it. So I called Ryan and told him and he called poison control. They said if she just sucked on the sponge thing than she was fine- just rinse her mouth out with water and give her some milk to dilute anything that did get in her tummy. Of course I felt like a horrible mom, so Ryan was sure to tell me that the lady from PC told him that it happens all the time- parents don't think about air fresheners and since they're often so low to the ground they're a target for kids. The thing was, I HAD thought about the air fresheners, it was just that she had never shown any interest in them. Its like they were just part of the wall that she walked past a million times a day. But THIS morning she took an interest in them.
THANK GOODNESS she is okay and didn't really ingest any- more like sucked on the sponge thing. But its just another reminder of how ON MY TOES I need to be.
Another thing that made me feel better was at the studio today, in the mecca of moms, I was reassured by all of them that its happened to their kids- they've had to make that dreaded phone call to poison control. One particular story that made me feel a lot better was about a little girl who used super glue as lip gloss. Her mom told me that she had been playing with it for a good 10-20 minutes before she even caught her- so by the time she did realize it, the poor girls lips and teeth were all sticky and glued shut. PC told her to use mineral oil to get it off and that she'd be just fine. And she was! :) So I am really trying not to get down on myself too badly- I know I'm going to make tons of mistakes as a mom.... I think this about sums it up:
IT'S TOUGH TO BE A MOM!!!!!!