Honey we broke the baby.......again!

The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy on all fronts. Work wise, a colleague got laid off so the rest of us are under a lot of pressure to do more than our share. Then there was a friend’s 40th birthday party (yes some of us are old! I’m years away though) for which I was writing and directing a skit to make fun of him. That and many other things conspired to keep me away from blogland. But the most worrisome event was when Apple complained about stomachache.
One (not so) fine Friday morning I got a call from her day care operator saying she was complaining of tummy ache. Hubby had just dropped her off and she seemed totally fine, so I was a little suspicious. I wondered if this was one of the days when they were short staffed and used every little excuse to send kids home. Apple dint have any other symptoms but I dint have the heart to leave her there in case she was really hurting. So I made an appointment with her doctor, left work and picked her up. The doctor checked her and did not find anything wrong, said it might have been something she has eaten and told me to give her Tylenol if she complains again. With that we returned home, mommy and Apple! With Tylenol in her tummy, Apple had forgotten all about pain and was all set to order mommy around. The day passed without incident and Apple continued to be her normal cheerful self until next evening. We were at a friend’s place when she started complaining about tummyache again. Since it was a weekend evening, we rushed her to the emergency room. After a couple of tests, X-rays and all the works, the diagnosis came in….’Constipation’!. Are you kidding me? She had had a couple of bowel movements on both the days so I was having tough time buying that diagnosis but the doctor gave us a ‘thanks for wasting my time” look. What was he so mad about ? That he had people in the next room with lung clots and heart problems and these idiots were wasting his time for a child’s constipation? Oh ok! Yes we can be stupid sometimes (ok, most of the times) but how were we supposed to know if our baby’s condition required immediate attention or not? When my happy two-year-old cries uncontrollably, it sounds serious to me. What if she had an ulcer or appendicitis?
Anyway we were back home and she slept peacefully because of the painkiller.
Next morning we started to give her foods /drinks to help her with her so called constipation. We started with prune juice. Now the last time we gave her prune juice for her constipation it had resulted in a disaster:
She was around one, still on formula bottle and was constipated one day. I remembered someone telling me that prune juice worked, so I filled her bottle with prune juice instead of formula. The poor thing liked the sweet taste and drank it all up. The next thing we know she has diarrhea! Oh ok…so prune juice really works …BIG TIME …so less prune juice next time! Nice trail and error parenting we got going there!
Coming back to this time, we were careful to give her little prune juice, that dint help, tried grape juice, dint help either! By evening she had started crying again …my impatient hubby decided to give her a laxative… an hour later she was still crying, tried pain killers etc …crying continued…finally at 11.00 PM we decided to give her rectal anema. That dint work either but tired from crying she finally slept. Around 4.00 am she woke up crying again and the next think we know….all the laxatives suddenly hit! We managed to break our poor child again! The next couple of hours she slept peacefully, having cleared up her tummy, while we ended up steam vacuuming the carpet, washing the sheets, clothes …oh the joys of parenthood!

I am happy to report that all is well in Apple land though Apple was seen asking God to impart more common sense to her parents so that they stop these trail and error tactics on her.