Olivia's trip to the ER

Yep, that's right! Yesterday we had our first visit to the good ole Emergency Room! Most of you reading this already know the story, but I HAVE to blog about it. After all, these kinds of things don't happen everyday AND one day when Olivia has kids of her own, I have documentation of what she put me through! And hopefully she will appreciate me as her mommy :) Now on to story....It was a normal Monday morning. I was still in my PJ's, kids were playing, making messes all over the house and I was doing my Monday ritual of laundry. Olivia was in my bathroom and I stripped the sheets off my bed and went to put them in the washing machine. When I walked back into the bathroom, she was sitting on the floor with a bottle of Loratadine open and pills were spilled all around her on the floor! FYI..Loratadine is an antihistamine, the generic version of Claritin. And this was a child proof bottle! I swooped her mouth and nothing was inside. I did not see any white residue anywhere either. However, I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Since she does take a Synthroid pill every morning, she knows what to do with a pill ie.. how to chew it up quickly and swallow. And coincidentally, the Loratadine was almost identical in size, shape and color to her Synthroid! Keeping all this in mind, I immediately called my doctor's office to speak to the nurse, but she didn't answer. So then I called Poison Control and after asking me some questions he advised me to take her to Emergency Room. He said an overdose could cause rapid or irregular heartbeat as well as seizures! YIKES! I call my doctor's office back one more time as I was frantically gathering my things together and finally got through to the nurse. She advised me to go to the ER as well. My lovely and gracious neighbor ran over and got Jacob and I raced off to St. Lukes. This was my first time ever going to the ER so I wasn't sure what to expect. Thank the Lord we didn't have to wait very long. I don't know if its because of her age or the fact that I had no idea how many pills she had swallowed, but we were seen within 10 minutes of getting there. They decided she needed liquid charcoal in order to absorb and bind to anything that might be in her tummy. The nurse warned me it would be a messy and unpleasant experience as she handed me a hospital gown to put on over my clothes and ordered Olivia to be stripped down to her diaper. Boy, was she right!!! I had to use a syringe and squirt it in her mouth. It was thick and sticky and went everywhere! She would spit it out, it would dribble down her chin and just got all over the place.

Here's proof...

She literally looked like I had given her black finger paint and let her go to town! Thankfully, the toy in the room was one she had never seen and held her interest for the most part, anyway. We alternated sips of charcoal with sips of orange juice but it still took me over 30 minutes to get it all down her. She started getting tired of it and was shaking her head no and crying. Poor thing!!!

I eventually had to just lay her down and shove it in the back of her throat. NOT fun for either one of us!! After we got it all in, we cleaned her up and she was worn out. She fell asleep in my lap and then we moved her to the bed where she took a 2 hour nap. They had her on a monitor so they could watch her vitals and she did great. We never once had concern or saw anything troubling. Thank the Lord! She woke up from her nap and started crying because she was scared and cold. Immediately the doctor came rushing in to see if she was ok. I thought that was nice! She had been sleeping so long that I guess once they heard noise from our room, they were surprised! He had the nurse bring us milk and juice and she was able to drink those with no problem. About an hour later, after being there for 5 hours, we were released to go home. It was certainly a scary and exhausting experience but I am so so so thankful she was ok. I thank the Lord that He was watching over her and she was not seriously injured!

And just in case anyone is wondering, no we do NOT plan on having any more :)