There is a moment, some point in time, where you realize that this being a parent thing is the absolute scariest thing that's ever happened to you. This baby that you thought was going to be so wonderful and so fun has now made you into a completely crazy person who makes no sense at all. You cry when nothing is wrong and you freak out even though everything is going to be fine, because
what if everything isn't fine? What if something happens to my baby?
This moment happened for me on Christmas Eve this past December when our little girl decided that she would like to go to the E.R. and visit the hospital for her first Christmas. To make a long story short, Little Girl decided to choke on her own spit while sleeping in her car seat after the Christmas Eve church service. When we got home from church she was asleep, so I brought the car seat in and set it on the floor in my parent's living room. About fifteen minutes later I heard her wake up coughing violently and ran over to her. I took her out of the car seat, patted her on the back, and tried to help her get whatever it was coughed up. She never stopped breathing, but after the coughing episode she went very pale and listless, which was very unusual. I completely panicked. I called the doctor's exchange, and when they said they would have to call me back, I decided there was no way I was waiting for that and we went to the E.R.
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| Little Girl with her Daddy in the hospital. |
If you bring a 2 month old baby into the E.R. and say that she's limp and pale, you do not have to wait, you go right back and see a doctor! Of course, by the time a doctor came into the room, Little Girl was breathing fine, color had returned to her face, and she was kicking so enthusiastically that it took 5-10 minutes to find a pulse! The doctor assured us that everything was almost certainly fine, but because she was so little, standard practice was to admit her overnight and watch her, just to be sure that she was okay and that it had only been a choking fit.
