A flashback. (A show-and-tell Sunday post of sorts.)

June 22, 2008 at 8:58 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments

Baby O woke up screaming on Friday morning. I brought him into bed with me and he dozed. When he woke up, he refused to nurse. For a good three hours, he fretted and fussed and refused to eat. I gave him some baby t.ylenol and hoped it would work. It didn’t seem to do much to help.

So when I changed his diaper, I took his temperature. It was 100.1, an hour and a half after I gave him the medication.

I called the pediatrician, and they told me to bring him in. They were concerned his cold might have turned into an ear infection. They examined his ears, and had to clean the wax out of one. Which made him scream, as he was already fussy to begin with.

But they didn’t see anything upon examination of his ears. So they instead sent us down to the lab for a blood draw – they wanted to make sure his white blood count wasn’t elevated.*

I’m not sure what I expected. I guess I thought they’d prick the heel of his foot like they did when he was newly born.

But when they brought us back to the phlebotomist’s room, they asked one of us to sit in the chair and roll up his sleeve.

I think it was the chair that undid me. How many times did I sit in it and have my own blood drawn on our path to bring him home with us?

Daily draws for one full week before retrievals.

Every other day blood draws for our frozen cycles.

Beta days for all 5 cycles.

It just didn’t seem fair that they were going to do the same thing on my son.

I lost it. I teared up, and I handed J our son, and told him that I just couldn’t, and would he hold Baby O while they took his blood? And then I turned away and I went into the bathroom, and I cried. And I felt like a coward. Because here I was crying when they were poking my baby with a needle. Who was the mom here?

And this wonderful, wonderful nurse saw me crying. And she brought me a glass of water and a tissue, and told me that it was ok.

I couldn’t explain to her why I was crying so hard. It had been a stressful morning, for sure. I was really worried about Baby O, yes. I hate seeing someone stick my baby with a needle, yes.

It was that stupid fucking chair.

*They did call me and tell me that Baby O’s white blood count was normal and that they suspected it was a virus. He was no worse for the wear – slept a ton on Friday, went down early, and seemed better on Saturday. Today he’s about the same as he was on Friday – crying and fussing, but no high temperature. I’m just hoping that tomorrow he’s a little better, the poor kid.

And he did just fine with the blood draw. In fact, he screamed harder and louder when the pediatrician cleaned out his ears to examine them then he did when they drew his blood. And he had a little bandage to show off to everyone.