Pee-se be seated unless urine a hurry. (There's something about being an adult and/or a parent that makes your normal inhibitions take flight, hence the punny foreshadowing. Feel free to stop reading really at any time if this isn't your thing.)
Well, obviously, this is about that liquid gold that doctors love so much. Not love in the normal way, mind you but more in the favorite-lab-test-don't-know-what's-wrong-with-you-let's-get-a-urine-sample-and-see-what's-happening kind of "love." This post is also not about me, cause, you know...why would I be writing about this if it were about me? Well, I wouldn't. Instead, it's about my kid, so that's fair game, right???
It's a story of trying to get a quick, easy little urine sample from a non-toilet-trained child. Apparently, we have discovered the medical crux for #2. With our oldest, she only has to look at another kid who has the sniffles and that child's cold magically seems to morph into an ear infection in my own. For the majority of her first 3 years of life, my child was only around 1 other kid for child care. The odds of avoiding mass sickness were in her favor. It practically gives me the vapors to think of what would have happened if she were in a more traditional child care situation for those years. We're just doing our part to help create a new Amoxycilin resistant superbug. (Remember when I wrote about the time I had to physically restrain her by laying over her upper torso while two kind but perfunctory nurses gave her painful shots in her thighs because the traditional antibiotic route had been exhausted...on her birthday. I do.)
To her credit, #2 scoffed her way through a couple of small ear infections. No big deal. She doesn't let those get in her way. Which is fan-tas-tic given her turbulent relationship with Amoxycilin. However, she does seem to have a procilivity for UTIs. This leads us to the most recent bout with collecting "a sample." It has been something of a 3-day saga involving
*2 juice boxes
*a 2-hour visit to a walk-in clinic
*the happiest, most amenable kid I could possibly imagine in an exam room
*songs...lots of songs
*careening across town to get our almost-5-year-old (!!!)'s closing program for pre-school
*20 minutes massaging (manhandling? probing? palpating? all of the above) the little one's lower abdominal, e.g. bladder, region so as to lead to "a sample" while she merrily ignored my urgency and continued to play with the tie on my shirt in an imperturbable manner
*cookie bribes
*a couple of collection cups hanging around the house...nothing brings back memories of pregnancies like those
*putting things on backwards
*spilling things
*going through a whole explanation with the med office about how, well, my child can't really potty on the potty on demand given that she has never done this before...no, it doesn't matter that there's a special little "hat" for her to sit on (hat??? why in the world would we call it that?)
*and more!
Though she might disagree, this is happening to the right kid. Our youngest is unflappable when dealing with matters that the rest of us cringe, cry and curse from. Watching the doctor poke around on her little body, my first thought was "Wow, this child will have no problem with her annual OB/Gyn visits." I'm sympathetic like that, apparently.
Finally, here's a shout out to out babysitter, i.e. my mother-in-law who will never read this, who takes it all in stride. She ended up waiting at our house for about 1/2 an hour by herself until I came back from the "quick" visit to the doctor, only to throw a hungry kid at her an hour before the child's bedtime with brief instructions to feed/brush/dress the little one, and, oh, please get a urine sample from her as well. Then I rushed out the door for the frantic, aforementioned dash across town to catch at least a couple of songs that only a 4 and 5-year olds would sing so enthusiastically (and with motions!) in front of a couple of hundred people.
I'm not a big proponent of starting potty training before a child turns 2, no matter the gender. But this situation, admittedly, has given me the slightest urge to start the training post haste. We're all hoping to get this mess out of the way so that the birthday celebrations (plural!) can commence because in this family, when you have kids, you bunch the birthdays all together, which makes for a good amount of present wrapping, cake and ice cream all at once. In a mere 2 1/2 weeks, we'll have not only a brand new 5-year old but a newly minted 2-year old as well. These are good times that make up for a lot for those moments that are less than ideal.
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