Show and Tell: A Day in My Life

It’s Show and Tell Tuesday!

Today’s prompt is “A Day in the Life”.

I had all these grand intentions of photographing my super exciting life hour by hour, but each day has slipped by in the past week and I keep on forgetting. So my grand plan is to ACTUALLY do this post tomorrow.

HOWEVER, I do have a special treat for you. I am going to give you a glimpse into the day that I had yesterday. Prepare your tissues…you will be laughing. Or crying. Either way, I’m sure you will need tissues.

Now, I’m sure any Mom of little children can relate and therefore will laugh. For those of you who are stopping by here, I am a stay at home Mom to two girls who are 13 months apart (15 months and 2 months old). One child came to us biologically, and the other is temporarily placed in our home through foster care. Another important factor to consider is that my husband just recently got a job at a local fire department. He works 24 hour shifts, and since he is the newbie, he is on probation and is not allowed to take off of work for any reason. Ok, I’m sure they would let him off if it was a bona fide emergency, but considering that they are all first responders, they kinda know an emergency from a fake “emergency”.

The morning dawned bright and early. I had already been up in the night for several feedings, kissing Theo goodbye and then of course got up with Tera. Little Miss had visitation that morning, so she was whisked off to spend time with her bio Mom. While she was gone, Tera and I ate breakfast, washed the dishes, read several books (over and over again), put away all the newborn clothes and unpacked all the 0-3 month, put away my three baskets of clean and folded laundry that had been sitting around for weeks, and scrolled through Instagram uninterrupted by a screaming child. Oh, and I took a shower.

Little Miss got back and cried and cried while I tried to get the girls ready for a doctors appointment. I threw snacks, diapers, outfit changes, wipes, sippy cup, books and bubbles in the diaper bag, along with allllll the paperwork that I need for Little Miss. I left a good hour before the appointment, because it would take me 15 minutes to get there, 10 minutes to get the girls out of the car and they wanted me at the appointment 20 minutes early to fill out paperwork.

Halfway to the hospital (where the appointment was), I realized I forgot Tera’s grilled cheese lunch on the counter. Crap. Poor girl was going to be hungrrryyyy!. But I figured she would survive until after the appointment. At this point, I texted my sister in law who has three girls very close in age:

Me: I’m running around like crazy because I’m taking Little Miss to an appointment and this is the first time I’m taking both girls! I’m just a little freaked out. What’s the worst thing that can happen?? Tell me so that if it doesn’t happen I can feel accomplished

E: The worst things are trying to avoid fits and keeping them from eating off the floor! Food helps prevent fits, and it inevitably falls on the floor and then they want to eat it! I am normally not a germaphobe, but I draw the line at medical facilities 🙂 And I pretty much always feel like the worst, most frazzled Mom ever when I have multiple children at an appointment with me. I’m pretty sure every Mom feels that way. Also, my babies have this innate ability to have blow-out poops just before walking into a place- especially if I’m in a hurry!

***Thanks for foreshadowing, Eryn!*****

As soon as I got there I texted her back:

Me: Made it. Early. Little Miss screamed the whole way and then conked out as soon as we got into public. No one believes me that she cries all the time because she always pulls little miss angel in public.

Now, picture this. I have two children…neither can walk. I have a stroller and a carseat and two diaper bags and I have to walk ALLLLLL the freaking way across that hospital. They had wagons, but I didn’t want to have Tera in an unstrapped rolling device because I knew once I got to waiting rooms, I would have no way to contain her. So I hauled that carseat on my arm while pushing the stroller with one hand and an occasional directional nudge with my hip.

IMG_6109

After that, everything went downhill fast. The 20 minutes early turned into 30 minutes of waiting in the waiting room, followed by a nurse checking us out for .3 seconds and then another 30 minutes of waiting for the doctor to show.

Then the blowout happened. As I held Little Miss on my lap, she exploded. I mean…everywhere. Diaper, onesie, pants, me. Lovely. Thankfully that 30 minute wait gave me a chance to use 9000 wipes to clean up the scene. And thankfully I had an extra outfit for Little Miss. Meanwhile, I’ve gone from entertaining Tera on my lap and not letting her touch the floor to “whatever, kid. As long as we are still alive when we actually leave this building, I’ll let you do whatever.” Rolling on the floor happened. Not my finest moment.

Finally Mr. Dr came, and was in the room for about 30 seconds. He didn’t even touch the baby. 10 seconds in his presence, and he informed me that she needed her blood drawn and the nurse would be right in.  20 more minutes of waiting for the nurse to come back when she then informed us that we had to go down to the lab to get Little Miss’ blood drawn. It had now been two hours in the hospital. I *almost* burst into tears when I learned that the lab was ALLLLLLLLLL the way across the hospital.

I lugged/pushed/hauled my children to the lab where we waited to get ahold of a social worker for consent for a good 20 minutes. FINALLY, we went back to the room. At this point, Tera was losing it. To be honest, so was I. I I had had lunch, unlike a certain toddler who happened to have the worst Mom ever who LEFT HER LUNCH AT HOME ON THE COUNTER!

Phlebotomist #1 enters the room, takes one look at Little Miss and leaves again. Mind you, this is a children’s hospital. She spends 20 minutes at her desk while I try to keep Little Miss from screaming and keep Tera out of the trash can filled with bloody gauzes. Finally, phlebotomist #1 re-enters the room and informs me that they need a certain amount of blood from Little Miss that cannot be taken in one go since she is only 10 pounds. Ok, fine. Phlebotomist #1 (bless her heart), pokes this screaming kid with her needle three times. NO BLOOD. None of it. The screaming finally gets to Tera, and after she has taken everything from the diaper bag and strewn it across the floor, she proceeds to hang on my knees and wail. So there we are…me, holding a screaming Little Miss, Tera clinging to my knees and just.losing.it and phlebotomist #1 also in tears. We’ve been in that hospital building for exactly 3 hours.

Enter phlebotomist #2, who proceeds to stick this poor child for the 4th time while phlebotomist #1 entertains Tera (bless her heart) with books and bubbles. A couple drops of blood drip into the vial and everyone tries to coax some more out of her. But Little Miss is a stubborn one and she would not give up a single drop of blood without a battle. So we quit. We called it a day.

And guess what? I have to go back AGAIN to get this girl’s blood drawn to fill up that vial. Thankfully, this time I will be able to go without my Tera-girl.

And that my friends, is a day in the life.

Hopefully a day that I (or you!) do not ever have to relive!

 

 

 

 

 

2 comments

Leave a Reply to Nancy Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.