An irreverent, inclusive, alternative parenting community
Most helpless parenting moment
A thread on facebook about a little guy's broken arm having to be re-set inspired this but I thought I'd throw it out there as pain shared sometimes helps in a non-sarcastic way.
My worst parenting moment (thus far) was not being able to be with my 5 year old as she was given an IV (emergency admission and I had an infant with me with no one to watch the baby).
Which if they'd been successful, wouldn't have been so bad, but it took 7 pokes and strapping her arm to a board to get it in, she screamed at the top of her lungs the entire time and fled from the lab technician the moment they let her up, despite him chasing her down the hall with a teddy bear trying to compliment her on how brave she was.
I have never felt more torn up than at that moment. Thankfully it only lasted about an hour (yeah... it took that long).
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by The Oracle on -
Gah. Helpless hospital stories are the worst. Our NICU story has been shared here in various forms several times so I won't rehash it, but when you put it as "most helpless," there are certainly moments that stand out to me more than others: the hours of effort it took to get him to breathe right (and finally admitting defeat), being crowded out from his bedside in ER, watching him suffer DTs as he came off the pain meds, being told I couldn't be the one to give him his first breastmilk through a tube. (This last was remedied and in the end I did get to, but holy moly I cried long and hard about that one.) Luckily I had gone home and was in a deep sleep when they decided to intubate him, but I've gone over that one enough in my mind that it almost feels like I was there. Alan really was, though, and I know it was a horrible moment.
Since then, it's anything with needles. And it's just getting worse. Last time it took five people to get a blood draw out of him, and he screamed bloody murder the whole time. I'm getting the shakes just thinking about it again.
-
Permalink Reply by Herasmus B. Dragon on
-
Hubby still is traumatized at missing Ebay's birth. I'm not sure he'll ever get over it.
-
Permalink Reply by rommie on -
Having to hold my 6-month-old down while the nurses put him under for surgery. He kicked and screamed, and the mask was huge on his little face, but the worst part was when it took hold and he just went...limp. Then having to just walk away and trust that they'd take care of him even though his regular doctors had done a pretty lousy job of it up to that point.
Wookie, we've had bad luck with labwork, too. Moose has had to have blood drawn pretty frequently due to his food allergies (both before and after they were finally diagnosed), and now he freaks out when he smells antiseptic. He's usually okay at his pediatrician, but he screams and thrashes the second we set foot in a lab, hospital, or the clinic where we just had our TB tests done. The people working there get cranky that he causes a fuss, but it's one of their ranks who took an hour and four adults to hold him down and draw a vial of blood. Poor babies.
-
Permalink Reply by mightyninjamom on -
Mamawho - oh god, I had just gotten around to forgetting that story! *shudder*
Little B had a pretty nasty blood draw, but nothing as bad as any of these stories. But he was older, and I was able to stay with him so that probably helped. He still isn't a big fan of anything like that, but he was pretty calm when he and I both had to get IV's for dehydration from a bad bout of gastroenteritis.
Our last trip to the ER was for the Little Miss. I really couldn't do anything for her except hold her hand while she got a painful shot of antibiotics.
-
Permalink Reply by kommishoner on -
The little man had to be in the hospital for what the doctors thought might be a telescoping bowel but may have also just been gas and/or nothing. He had an iv, ultrasound and x-ray.
The first day he wore a dress to school was harder, though. We were new to the school, so we weren't sure how the staff or other kids/parents would react, and I was terrified that it would be a horrible squelching of the brave little individualism he's got going on. It all turned out fine, though.
-
Permalink Reply by Mamawho on
-
Oh, the other awful parenting moment. When GirlWho's best friend was killed in a car wreck, and she wanted to know why she still had to wear seat belts, because they didn't save his life. And then the next morning, she was so upset, she threw up when she got to school. I was totally out of my depth, and a little bit of me secretly hoped she was young enough to forget all of this horribleness. Fortunately, her preschool was better prepared than I and had grief counselors on call for weeks and the class included his memory through the end of the year, and had a little balloon release ceremony at the end of the year, with each student's favorite memory about him written on a little piece of paper slipped inside the balloon.
-
Permalink Reply by Kiwi on -
1st Kid was about six weeks old and began running a really high fever. When it wouldn't break his doctor's nurse sent us to the ER. In the ER after battery of tests they ended up having to give him a lumbar puncture to rule out meningitis. The absolute worse part was the way he screamed. It was a cry of pain unlike anything I thought a baby that small could make. Even thinking about nearly ten years later makes me full body shudder.
-
Permalink Reply by Joe Mama on -
Two stories - the first time number one son had night terrors - he screamed and screamed and we had no idea what was wrong. We stripped him and searched for spider bites and bruises and checked his temp and tried to feed him and changed his diaper and bounced him and sang to him and cried along with him. It was the longest half hour of my life.
Second time was really a extended time after my first pregnancy when I was trying to breastfeed. I lost so much blood (stupid placenta, stupid incompetent doctor) that I wasn't ever able to make milk, but I was pumping every 90 minutes around the clock until the blood collected in the tiny little jars that were supposed to fill with milk for my beautiful little boy. I cried everytime. After almost a week Michael took the pump away and hid it.
-
Permalink Reply by ks on -
This past Friday when A broke his leg. We were in the ER and the docs had to straighten and splint it, since there were no openings for surgery until the next day. Mr. S took N to the waiting room, but I had to hold poor A down while they pulled it straight and splinted it. Even with morphine, he screamed so much that I was shaking after it was done. And then again on Monday when the therapist came in to show him how to use the walker. He was scared to death that it would hurt like it did when they straightened it and we had to make him get up and try it. Poor thing was terrified and begging us to please just carry him back to the bed and don't make him try to stand and walk and my heart was breaking for him even while I was making him do what she said and get back in it his own self. It has been a fairly traumatizing weekend all around.
-
Permalink Reply by kommishoner on
-
Soooo, I'm feeling a little perspectived right now. I'm sorry all of you have been through these things.
-
Permalink Reply by guinnessgoddess on -
When A and E were a day old, the nurse was bathing E while I nursed A. A started crying harder than she had in her 24 hours of existence, and I called the nurse's attention to it; she said A must be feeling sympathy for her sister, who was rather displeased with being bathed. Then I shouted, "She's turning blue" and I watched A's head turn the most troubling deep blue. The nurse turned, grabbed A, and ran down the hall with her. I tried to get up and stumble along but what with the c-section, it was difficult. My father followed the nurse. They both came back and caught me as I collapsed in the hospital hallway. The nurse explained that they had to suction A's lungs out: because she had been about to crown when I had my emergency c-section, they figured she'd purged her lung content in the birth canal, so hadn't suctioned her lungs as they had her sister's. She said A would be fine and said, sympathetically, "Welcome to motherhood and your first of hopefully not many, but likely a few more, moments of feeling like this."
© 2013 Created by Offsprunger.
Powered by
