My Kid Swallowed a Marble!

I had written earlier about how I LOVED leaving babyhood behind. Babyhood is cute and adorable and LABORIOUS AND BORING! You don't sleep well for months, and years, have to carry your baby around and watch him like a hawk for HOURS and HOURS, doing nothing else but watching your child. Then there's the poop. I thought it was all done and dusted after he turned 2, but I got a rude flashback of it recently, just before he turned 3 years old!

I was having a sick day. Sick day, not sick leave! His school had a holiday so I took him to a neighbourhood bookstore to while away time. It's kinna like an air-conditioned playground as it has a train engine, a Lego station etc. he runs around for an hour while I browse thru books. I bought him a marble run that day. This was the first 'toy' in technical terms I bought for him in ages! (Otherwise it's usually books, stickers, paints etc)

After we got home and set it up (he was quite excited!), I finally took a mini nap for ten minutes or so. Didn't think he needed to be "watched" since "he isn't a baby anymore to put things on his mouth". He kept playing for a good 3-4 hours which was excellent, since I was steadfast at my sneezathon (I live in the allergy capital of this country+ winter was slowly making its way in)

By the time it was 6 pm, I.e. His bath time, he turned to me with a big giant smile saying "mummy! I ate a marble!"

What??!!

"It's now in my tummy!!"

Oh boy.

I called his paed that very moment. Frankly I didn't know whether this was a big deal - but suddenly, I distinctly remembered my maid warning me about the easy- swallowbility of marbles many months back. The paed's reaction was "Oh God. Bring him in. Now"

Oh, so this was serious business.

My sneeze and cold suddenly vanished and we got dressed to go get an X-ray. What a waste of an evening! Sitting at a doctors office. Sigh.

So she saw the chest & abdomen xray, the marble was somewhere in his intestine. She asked me to watch out for stomach ache, vomiting and bloating the next few days. AND watch his poop - to make sure the marble's out. Hahaha. I laughed. The next day his teacher laughed about it too, apparently she had done that for her own daughter. My reaction was an over the top hysterical laugh. I mean, it just came out.

I wasn't lucky the first time. Neither was I the second, third, forth, fifth and sixth time. So we did another X-Ray - which was clear. We did a sonography, which was clear too.

So where on earth did the marble go? I checked poop six times and it was all for *NOTHING*? That sneaky little thing just slid out of my expert eyes?! Did it just hide beneath all that muck and smell? Did it really get out? I still had doubts even after a few days - and people gave the standard reply of "oh you must've missed it"

All the accusations of being a "bad poop checker" had clearly left me very upset. The learning from this whole incident is that next time: preserve the poop for your husband to check, since you aren't doing a good job anyways !!

Another learning was to line up a few "safe" activities that could be handed over when I want to be left alone, i.e., be sick in peace. One of them is the coin slot box. These toy coins / tokens clearly can't be swallowed (but he's growing up- who knows!).

I gave this to him one sick afternoon and he played with it for hours.

Until later! Stay in touch!

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