Drama

Jack stopped taking a daily nap about 2 months ago. (I think, it is all starting to blur together.) But I am still trying to institute some daily quiet time during that part of afternoon. Today I was exceptionally tired from an over busy holiday weekend, so I put him in his room with great hope that he would actually rest. He was playing in there for an hour and when I went in to get him, I sat down on the floor to tidy up the messes he had made while he was putting his pants back on.

In the middle of his toy mess I discovered one lone button cell battery . I immediately asked him what toy it came from and where the toy was. Instead of telling me where the toy was, he told me this:

"The battery is right here. In my belly."

And I proceeded to freak out.

I demanded the toy the batteries had come, and he produced this light up jack-o-lantern, which sure enough, once held 3 button cell batteries. I kept asking him over and over where the other batteries were, and he insisted they were in his belly.

I phoned David, who called the pediatrician and then was on his way home, as I don't have a car right now.

Then I called my friend Renee and had her keep talking to me while I tore his room apart hoping to find the other 2 batteries. I knew they weren't in that room though. Jack doesn't make up stories, and if he says the batteries are in his belly, I knew they would be in his belly.

Googling only freaked me out more, and at some point the waiting was killing me and I started to cry. We have never had any sort of incidents with Jack, no trips to the ER, and he has never been the kind of kid who puts weird things into his mouth, at least not once he got past 8 months old or so.

Off to the ped we went, then to urgent care, then to radiology, then back to the ped. In radiology I stood on the other side of the wall watching that image of his little body pop up there on the screen, going painfully slow, and sure enough, there was the damn battery.

In his belly.

He swallowed a freaking battery.

Of all the things to swallow, he had to pick hazardous waste? All those years of giving him organic food and milk from cows who aren't treated with hormones and using all natural soap and so on and he swallows a battery.

And now the waiting begins. Unlike a coin, or a bead, or something harmless, that battery has to get out of there and the sooner the better. I have to give him laxatives and hope like hell that thing is out of there in 2 days time.

2 days of digging through poopy diapers. Although the alternatives are much scarier, I am not looking forward to it.

Please God, let that battery come out quickly.

(And double check all of your children's toys to make sure they do not have access to button cell batteries while unattended. I try to be very diligent about that sort of thing, but clearly accidents happen, and those small batteries are the ones that cause the biggest threat to children under 5.)