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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
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Permalink Reply by mightyninjamom on -
Yeah, kommish...right there with you.
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Permalink Reply by Zealflyer on -
All these stories are making me tear up. Just when I think my hormones are recovered from having two kids...
My worst moment so far had to be a blood draw as well. We took Mr. Questions into the hospital when he was just a few days old because his jaundice seemed to be getting worse. For some reason they required what seemed like a whole whack of blood to figure out if he needed treatment or not. The jabbing and stabbing seemed to go on for ever and my partner and I were were like,"What have we gotten ourselves into with the whole parenting thing?" I think that I actually had to request that The Curmudge remove himself to the hallway at one point. Eventually they ended up just jabbing Questions' heel to get the blood, as his veins were so small that they couldn't get the needle in properly. The whole thing really, really sucked.
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Permalink Reply by Zealflyer on
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Just curious if there's ever been any significant negative feedback with the public dress-wearing. Mr Questions has often worn nail polish and hair clips and has definitely gotten a few raised eyebrows from those, but no seriously negative comments. He has wanted to wear a dress in public a few times and I have been surprised at how resistant I feel about that. I'd love to just let him wear whatever he wants, but definitely fear that he is going to be made fun of. We don't actually have any dresses in the house that fit him right now (we had some larger hand-me-downs for his sister that fit him when we first got them), so the issue may or may not come up again. But I feel like a need to get my head around what I will do if he starts pushing for a dress of his own to wear out.
kommishoner said: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.
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Permalink Reply by Kat on -
Oh, gosh. Infant meningitis -- check. Broken bones - check. IV drips and lumbar punctures - check. Ambulance rides -- check. IEP meetings from Hell -- check. But probably the two worst things I ever had to deal with, was for Older Son -- trying to explain to him why he got beat up at middle school, and the school was going to write him up and give him detention because he put his arm up to deflect the attack and thus was in violation of the zero tolerance policy. It was like watching his innocence just crumble all at once in front of me. He just couldn't grasp why the authority figures he had been taught to respect were not only not helping him, but hurting him. I couldn't either. And I couldn't explain it, and I felt so useless to him because he needed an explanation. For Younger Son - his father had him for the day and being the ass that he is, he texted me and told me he wouldn't bring him back and wouldn't tell me where they were. I spent a day in a complete panic trying to figure out what to do, and was so angry with myself for not having gotten a visitation order in place that would have given me the right to call the police. Without that order in place, there was no "crime" and I just had to hope he'd bring him back. I filed the papers the very next day.
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Permalink Reply by Jersey on -
My most helpless moment by far was when my oldest son was 7 and he had some kind of raging infection going on. Turns out it was a staph infection in the heal bone of his foot. To diagnose this though, I had to hold him down while they aspirated it. It was excruciatingly painful and it had to be done quickly and without anything to numb it. He was screaming and crying and I was laying on top of him trying to talk him through it and keep him still. It was awful, but completely necessary so that we could then take the vial of fluid with us to the hospital ER and be admitted asap so they were able to start the IV meds he needed immediately. It all worked out in the end, but just thinking about it makes me feel awful.
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Permalink Reply by kommishoner on -
There hasn't, which is good. Our approach when we took him to preschool that day was basically pulling aside his teacher and saying "You'll notice he's wearing a dress. We feel confident that will be completely okay and celebrated by every single adult he comes into contact with. RIGHT? And you will be aware of interactions he's having with other kids about it." They were totally great and very supportive.
Mostly when he's wearing a dress people just think he's a girl. He's asked us to correct people who mistake him for a girl because he doesn't like it, but feels too shy to say anything. So we do, nicely: "actually, he's a boy." with a smile. The response nearly universally has been "oh, sorry!"
Our experience out in public has definitely been that if we treat it like it's no big deal other people don't make a big deal out of it. And I feel pretty strongly that I'm not going to tell him he should be less himself just because it might make other people mad - I'd rather give other people the chance to act right toward him, and show him that he isn't the problem if they don't.
Zealflyer said:Just curious if there's ever been any significant negative feedback with the public dress-wearing. Mr Questions has often worn nail polish and hair clips and has definitely gotten a few raised eyebrows from those, but no seriously negative comments. He has wanted to wear a dress in public a few times and I have been surprised at how resistant I feel about that. I'd love to just let him wear whatever he wants, but definitely fear that he is going to be made fun of. We don't actually have any dresses in the house that fit him right now (we had some larger hand-me-downs for his sister that fit him when we first got them), so the issue may or may not come up again. But I feel like a need to get my head around what I will do if he starts pushing for a dress of his own to wear out.
kommishoner said: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.
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Permalink Reply by Zealflyer on
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Thanks kommish. Sounds like you have a great approach to the whole thing. I waffle between thinking that I will be crushing his independent spirit if I don't get him a dress and that he will some day resent me for letting him go out in public in a dress if I do get him one. And despite the fact that the Curmudge is 100% for individuality, he's not a big fan of undue public attention. So trotting a son in a dress around would not be his idea of a good time. (And though Mr. Questions is quite a pretty boy, in my opinion, he is quite evidently a boy.)
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Permalink Reply by mcglory13 on -
You'd be surprised by how a kid who is pretty obviously a boy to you reads as girl once you put him in a dress. Smudge went as a princess for Halloween a few years ago. He looked like a boy in a dress to us. He had very short hair, etc. Once the dress was on? It was all the world could see and everyone thought he was a girl. Smudge was fairly young and didn't care, so we didn't correct them.
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Permalink Reply by Lady Grey on -
The first horrifying thing was Girl Grey falling down an entire flight of stairs at 1 yr old and watching as her head banged each step on the way down. I ran after her and fell down the last 5 myself, spraining my ankle. We went to the ER, but she was fine.
When she was 5 and had a adeno-tonsillectomy, watching her go under local anesthesia was particularly upsetting. It's wrong to see your child passing out like that.
Baby Grey and his "dusky spells" after he was born (aspirating reflux, requiring 5 mights in NICU followed by 3 months of an apnea monitor and 12 months of severe reflux and "failure to thrive") was traumatizing.
The real kicker with him was when he developed pneumonia two years ago while we were on vacation at very high altitude in southern Colorado. He was hospitalized in a small, rural hospital for two nights and then he ended up in the hospital again upon our return home. He developed an awful allergic reaction to what we thought was one of the medications he'd been on and it lasted, to a lesser degree, for ~ 8 months. Ultimately we think he harbored the bacteria that caused the pneumonia all that time and that was what was causing his rash. He received antibiotics (Bactrim) for an unrelated ear infection approximately 8 months after pneumonia onset and his rash disappeared after that. WEIRD. The most troubling thing about the pneumonia, after the hospital stays, was the look on Baby Grey's face. He became gaunt and had this creepy, bug-eyed look to him. It still haunts me. Once in a while I'm afraid that I'm seeing it again. A little PTS, I think.
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