Yesterday afternoon, I was doing some last minute cleaning before leaving home to get Bella from preschool and then head to work for the night. Ironically enough, I was in the middle of cleaning up beads the girls had used earlier to make necklaces because I thought they would be a choking hazard for the kid who still puts everything in their mouth.
Then I heard a cry and a scared voice say, "Mommy I swallowed a money!". My gut response was, "You're freakin kidding me." She was not. You could see the fear on her face. I called Steve and told him quickly what had happened and let him know he may need to get Bella from school. Then I called our pediatrician you said she needed to go to the ER for an xray. It kind of seemed like overkill to both of us since she was breathing fine and talking and crying but we agreed it's better to be safe than sorry so off we went. Before we left though, I held out some coins and asked her if she knew which kind she swallowed so we could tell the doctor. She quickly picked out the penny and I was thankful that it was at least one of the smaller ones.
Tatey Cakes fell asleep on the way there and slept all through registration and triage. She woke up confused in the exam room and didn't even flinch when she noticed how handsome her ER doctor was (or maybe that was me who noticed, I can't remember). She gave the doctor her usual silent treatment and death stare which he thought was cute instead of rude. When he walked out, she sat up and said, "If the doctor cut off Baby Luke's head, wouldn't that be silly!" and then laughed hysterically. Our friend, Baby Luke, had surgery a few months ago to replace a shunt in his brain and Matea was very interested in all of the details. I swear, I never said they had to chop off his head to do it and I'm not sure why she was thinking about that yesterday when we were at the hospital for a very different reason.
Let me tell you, these people were way too nice. Kept calling her "Sweetie" and "Honey" and took her back to the special room to see her actual xray and meet other techs and talk about how cute she is. Then the doctor gave us a photocopy of the xray, showed us the penny in her stomach, and told her a little story about how it would travel for a few days and eventually come out. I told him he was making it sound way too fun and that if he didn't leave her feeling a little scared, we'd probably be back in next week with a different object.
So, Baby Girl is fine. Mostly, she's lucky she has good insurance and her little visit only cost us $5 instead of the hundreds or thousands that usually come with an ER visit. She's lucky she didn't choke and die like we've always told her she would if she kept putting things in her mouth (scare tactic style parenting at its finest).
