This is a story about jumping to conclusions. Disclaimer: It has a grossness factor, so reader beware.
The past couple of days with Ella have been a little trying. She hasn't felt well and she's been very clingy and almost inconsolable at times. There has been lots of gas and poop and baby puke, and very little sleeping. It seems that every time I tried to put her down for a MUCH needed nap, she would wake up screaming 20 minutes later. She has needed constant motion so I've probably walked 10 miles around my house and yard. After a day of this by myself, I was at my wits end when Dave got home last night. He took her and walked her and tried to comfort her while I cooked dinner and raced around trying to do some things in the house. I took her back so he could eat before a meeting at church, and this meant that I ate with her in my lap. Not an unusual occurrence in our house. She started crying again so we went for a diaper change. When I opened the diaper, I was horrified to find something foreign in there. This was my thought process: "WHAT is that?! It looks like rice, but it can't be rice because breastfed babies don't eat rice. Rice doesn't come out whole in breastmilk. What else looks like rice? Tapeworms. Tapeworms! That would explain the horrible gas and stomach pain that's been upsetting her all day, and probably the green poop, too. Oh my, my baby has worms! People are going to think we are nasty! How did she get worms? The pets are up to date on all their medications, we don't have fleas, I know that tapeworms come from eating infected fleas. Can humans even get the same tapeworms as animals?....." This went on for two hours while I Googled it and waited for Dave to come home so I could tell him what a horrible mother I am because my baby has worms. Fast forward to this morning when I called the doctor's office and spoke to the nurse. She didn't seem at all phased by the whole worm thing and told me that the doctor might just call something in for us. Good! That means this happens sometimes because she didn't act like it was a big deal. A couple of hours later, she called back to tell me that the doctor wanted to see us. We were there at two, worm in purse so that they would know what kind of worms we were dealing with. I explained all the symptoms to the doctor and gave him the worm. We went through several scenarios in which she could have gotten the worms, but she hadn't been in any of them. He said, "The thing about worms is that you have to get them from somewhere." I said, "I know! This doesn't make any sense." He took the worm to look at it under the microscope.
Twenty minutes later he was back with questions.
Doctor: When did you find this in the diaper?
Me: Yesterday evening.
Doctor: Did you have rice yesterday?
Me: Yes! We did have rice for dinner!
Doctor: Is is possible that you dropped some on her?
Me: Well, she was in my lap while I was eating.
Doctor: This worm doesn't have any digestive organs, like the mouth. It's a solid piece of something. Do you think you might have dropped rice on her and it got in her diaper?
Me: Oh my God, I'm so relieved!!
My baby does not have worms, but she does have one half-crazy mother who is only getting crazier by the day. The gas and upset stomach could be explained by the spinach I ate for lunch on Sunday. I did thank the doctor for humoring me. He said he didn't mind, it broke up the monotony of the regular runny nose visits. :)
While we were there, I had him take a look at the big toe that Georgia kept sniffing. I broke the rules this morning and took the boot off to look at it. It was gross, so I cleaned it up and trimmed the toenail as best I could while it was kicking frantically. He said it was a little ingrown and might be getting infected, so we have some antibiotics for that. Georgia was right about that toe after all.
It's been said that God put that piece of rice in her diaper so that I would ask the doctor about her toe. That's probably the truth, especially since we are going to the beach next week and we don't want a sick baby, and I've been praying about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment