My Bad Day--Part I

Friday the 13th and a full moon.

I'm not superstitious or anything but working on a psychiatric ward, I can tell you that there is something about a full moon. Work has been more than crazy this week. I was looking forward to working my 4 hours on Friday and jetting out of that place. If only things went as we planned, right?

John gets Quincy ready for daycare in the mornings and I drop him off. This usually works well for us. Today Quincy was all bundled up like a burrito inside his car seat with only his little blue eyes sticking out. John puts him in the car for me--I can't carry the seat with Q in it, and off we go. I have a mirror facing Quincy's car seat so that I can see him out of my rear view mirror. We were about 4 blocks away and I heard him coughing and looked in the mirror to see the cough produce projectile vomit..... followed by a few more coughs and several more projectile vomits. I pulled over expecting him to be crying and really upset. He was practically floating in vomit, and even worse, he was trapped in by his car seat. I got out wet wipes and soon realized that wet wipes were not going to suffice. What to do? I literally stood on the side of the road (8am traffic) and almost cried. I felt horrible, I've had a terrible cold for about 3 weeks and was absolutely exhausted. I just wanted to get to work and get it over with so I could start the weekend and just rest. So I'm standing there thinking, "I should just turn around and go home now...Quincy has just vomited up his entire bottle, I feel horrible". But, on the other hand, I'm 4 blocks from the preschool, 5 blocks from work. I've gotten up early and gotten ready and I'm just SO close to the finishing the week out.

Warning: If your name is Margaret Srygley or you work in the daycare setting, Baptist in particular, please skip the following paragraph:)

So I get back in the car and drive to the daycare. Once there, I leave the car running and hop in the backseat with Q. I unbuckle him from swimming in formula vomit and take his clothes off. I use an entire container of wet wipes to attempt to clean the child and redress him. I take him into school with one less "extra" outfit in his bag and hope they don't notice that he smells like vomit. I'm feeling really bad about doing this to him...but he seems fine and happy, and it will only be 4 hours until I can get him myself. Plus, if he vomits at daycare or has 2 loose stools, they call for me to come and get him, so I know that if it gets bad I'll be coming back to get him anyway.

I get to work and I'm not sure why, but I start feeling worse. I just want to go home. 4 hours, I think, I can do this. At 9:00, I ask to go so I can get in and see the doctor. So I spend practically all morning in the doctors office. Bad sinus infection and a cold, neither of which I've been able to shake for about the past 3 weeks. I go by the pharmacy to get my meds and then go home to get in the bed, all the while waiting on the daycare to call. I got to sleep all afternoon and felt better when I woke up. I felt guilty for leaving Q there all day, but I knew that if he was at home, I would be getting no rest at all. And he must be fine or they would have called, right?

Wrong.

I go to get him around 5:00 and the worker tells me that he has had 2 "loose stools" and 2 diarrhea diapers. He was wearing ONLY a button up shirt, nothing on underneath, and a diaper. Apparently he had gone through all the clothes in his bag. I was embarrassed to not have had more clothes in his bag (we are required to have 2 changes and I actually had 3, but used one myself before taking him inside) and it was freezing outside. I just wanted to get out of there, get him home, put some clean fresh clothes on him. While I'm gathering his things, there is another mom getting her child. Of course she is dressed perfectly, perfect makeup, and puts her precious little girl in her car seat, careful to tuck her in with a big pink fuzzy warm blanket. I want to run the other way. She looks at me and asks if I want to borrow a blanket. I told her "no, but thank you very much" and sort of ran. I had a zip up hoodie on, so I stuck Quincy inside and zipped him in with me.

So it hit me on the way home that she had said he had basically 4 diarrhea diapers. Why didn't they call me? I looked at his sheet for the day and see that he even refused one of his bottles. Then I suddenly remember the night before when I was dressing him for bed he had a huge "spit up". I realize now that this was vomit. Once at home, I take his temp, which is 100.1 and decide to give him a bath. He isn't fussy, but not his usual smiley self either. During his bath I could tell that he was getting cold so I got him out quickly and just held him. He just snuggled with me. Didn't make the guilt go away though.