Whew! What a Morning!

So this morning I was in our van taking Hannah & Olivia to school. Cassie was already at her school. We weren't even out of our neighborhood yet when Olivia started choking. It sounded more serious than a normal little choke/cough, so I pulled over and got out (in the pouring rain, no less) to check on her. After some serious stress over the choking, she stopped. I asked her what was wrong, she pointed inside her mouth and said "hair clip". I was like "What? Where's your hair clip?" since it was no longer in her hair. She said "In my mouth". I asked her if she swallowed it and she said yes.

So what does one do when your 2 year old child swallows a 2-inch piece of metal?! Do I call the doctor? Drive to the hospital? Call my mom!? Olivia is behind me in her car seat crying and holding her chest. She is my child that can have a double ear infection that's horribly aweful and never complain. She has a high pain tollerance, so her crying scared me. I called the pediatrician and they told me to come in. We drove straight there. Of course it was pouring down rain and I'm trying to drive carefully but quickly. We finally got there and they said she seemed fine but wanted to get some x-rays done just in case. To make sure it wasn't caught anywhere dangerous and had gotten to her stomach okay. So we went down the street to the hospital for x-rays.

This is what they found


Yes, it's in her stomach. The x-ray tech came out of her little room with a shocked look on her face. She said they saw lots of strange things in kids' stomachs but that was one of the biggest she'd seen for such a little girl. 3 different nurses all gathered around in surprise. There were super nice. They had us wait until the radiologist reviewed it and then called our doctor. They said they might have to go in with a scope to remove it. But the doctors decided they'd give it a couple of days and see if it would pass on its own. Fun...what great timing for potty training. But if it didn't come out soon, they'd x-ray her again to see where it is. The nurse said the concern was that it might perferate the intestines as it moved through. Great. So the option is, wait and see or if that doesn't work she'll have a hole in her intestines and need surgery. I don't like those options.

But apparently once foreign objects get to the stomach, 90% of them come out on their own and it won't hurt her to sit inside her awhile.

Now, if you're a mom out there, you've probably lived through this same day (pretty much) so you know what I'm talking about. You might even be laughing at me for freaking out so bad about it. But in our 5+ years of parenting so far, this was really our first "emergency", so I know we're very blessed that this is the worst we've had. Please pray for this clip to pass safely out of Olivia very soon. Now that's a sentence I never thought I'd write.