What should you do when your baby is swallowing glass? First, don’t panic. Our baby was caught swallowing glass and all is still well. It was terrifying but it turns out we are not the first parents to experience their toddler swallowing foreign objects. Here is our story!
A few weeks ago I ended up at the emergency room Saturday evening, and again on Sunday morning, with my 18-month-old son. We broke a juice bottle on the kitchen tile, picked up the large glass fragments, then wiped up what was left with a bath towel. The towel went in the laundry basket and tiny shards of glass ended up on the bottom of the basket. Taylor discovered this as she was doing her chores. I told her to leave the basket by the back door. Before I could clean out the glass, Sawyer got to it. I guess the glass looked tasty. Everything looks tasty at 18 months. One of my kid’s doctors told me the mouth is an important part of a child’s developing senses. That’s why everything goes into it.
So Sawyer ate glass. I heard him crunch it between his teeth. He spit most of it out into my hand. A few pieces left tiny cuts on the inside of his lips. And he swallowed the rest of it. But he is still alive, so no worries. Needless to say, I was freaking out when this happened. Trying to be cool as I call poison control, call our family doctor, and then take him to the ER. The doctors didn’t find anything. Clear, lead-free glass does not show up very well on x-rays. Sawyer was acting perfectly normal, smiling and playful as ever. They said to bring him back if he started acting funny or if we saw any blood in his diaper. Okay. I was ready to go home and so was my little dude. We were tired of the hospital after only a few hours despite having the company of Blu and the rest of the gang from Rio on the telly.
The next morning we were getting ready for our Bible meeting and I discovered a few drops of blood in Sawyer’s diaper. Back to the emergency room we go. Rather be safe than sorry. I recently lost a baby to a miscarriage and I would not take any chances with my other living babies. I was slightly paranoid. Thankfully the wait was shorter on a Sunday morning. After more x-rays, tests, and a little poking and prodding we decided that Sawyer had passed the teeny, tiny glass shards and we could go home again and not worry. Yea! Since then he has been fine and dandy. Healthy and happy. (Sigh of relief.)
[ngg src=”random_images” display=”pro_imagebrowser” is_ecommerce_enabled=”1″ maximum_entity_count=”20″]Lessons learned here:1 Don’t wipe up the liquid from a broken bottle with a bath towel. Use a paper towel and throw it away. This way no glass ends up in the laundry basket.
2 Never underestimate the speed your 18-month-old son, or possibly daughter, can find trouble. Put the baby in the play-pen till the mess is cleaned up.
3 They make hospital gowns for babies and my 18-month-old looked absolutely adorable in his little gown. This is a sick thought. No parent should ever see their child in a hospital gown. Ahhh… what a world.
I hope all you wonderful moms feel better. You are never alone with your parenting problems. All of us have some crazy stories of how our kids did this or that… and we all survived to tell the tale. Keep on kicking Moms and Dads! Don’t give up and don’t panic :-) Signing off, Tina
Originally posted July 24, 2012
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This post was great. It's always good to hear honest stories of motherhood. Glad your little guy is okay!
I haven't had a child eat glass, but I have had a child play in the PUBLIC toilet at Publix. So that was pretty disgusting. (Visiting from the Manic Mondays linky)
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Thanks! Yeah… I always say that kids are disgusting creatures ;-)
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How scary! I'm glad everything came out okay!
hmm, came out okay… apparently my kids toilet humor is rubbing off on me sorry! :)
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Glad he was okay. As a nurse, yes, we make all sorts of cute-but-creepy kid-sized medical stuff. Did they let you see the baby blood pressure cuffs? Those crack me up!
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This will go down as one of those moment s that you wished hadn't happened and that you would love to go back and do things differently. We all have plenty of those moments we can recall. Well done for your honesty in writing about it.
I seem to have lots of those moments… By writing about it I was hoping to help other parents. Kids are tooo quick and noisy! Have a great week!
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Dude. I would be freaking out, calmly, so as not to alarm the wee lititle one. Good lessons.
It was pretty scary. Especially since I had a miscarriage earlier that year. I was very protective of my babies!
I’m so glad he’s okay. That’s scary.
And I loved the photos attached, especially the bougainvillea and jacaranda. They grew in my home town in Florida and I miss them.
Thank you, Joanne. Me too! And we do love the flowers and trees in Mexico :-) We have beautiful colors all year long!