Of Silver Bells and Butterflies

I haven't posted this story yet because I was waiting to get a picture of the bell and the butterfly.  Sadly, I think the gold butterfly charm was thrown away.  It had been wrapped in a paper towel, sitting on the kitchen window sill, but it has vanished. 

When you get to the end of the story, you'll understand why I'm not devastated that the gold butterfly charm is gone!

Yes, the title of my post conjures up images of fairies and unicorns and a lovely meadow filled with butterflies and sweet smelling flowers.  Read on, my friends.

It was the day after I (finally) brought the baby home from the hospital.  My mom was here to help out, and I left Baby Girl downstairs with her and the big sisters so I could go up and use my new breast pump in an attempt to build up my milk supply.  I've had issues in the past and was trying to avoid that this time around.

Little Man followed me upstairs, and was playing in my room as I pumped and talked on the phone with my older sister.  He found a little "silver" bell on my dresser and started to play with it.  I watched him as he picked up something else from my dresser.  He put the something inside the bell, held the bell over his head, looked up, opened his mouth, and the something fell straight down his throat.

He turned to me with a look of horror and pain, and I FREAKED.  I yelled something (no clue what) to my sister and told her I'd call her back.  I grabbed him up, flipped him upside down and stuck my finger down his throat.  No, sticking my finger down his throat was not the best plan of action.  I could feel the something with the very tip of my finger, then he coughed and gagged, and I couldn't feel it anymore.

I screamed for someone to help me, and my mother came flying up the stairs followed by the 13 year old.  I didn't know what to do, and my mom said to call 911, so that's what I did.

There was a policeman at our door within about three minutes.  By this time, Little Man was still upset, and was crying a little.  Every few seconds he would make a sort of wheezing sound.

Within a few more minutes, there was an ambulance and a firetruck in my yard!  And seven large men in uniform standing in my rather small living room.  And there I sat in my nursing pj's, trying to hold the front together so nothing would fall out, and trying not to cry. 

Little Man wanted nothing to do with me.  He was still a little angry at me for being away from him for five days, so he was sitting with his 13 year old sister, who he prefers to me most days anyway.  The nine year old was holding Baby Girl and trying not to be in the way.  I honestly don't know what my mom was doing.  She's notorious for completely freaking out in any slightly stressful situation, (When I was ten, my daddy had to hit her to calm her down before taking me to the ER.  He knocked her into the bathtub, where she kept shouting something about having lockjaw.  I remember thinking, while dripping blood, that if she really had lockjaw, she would just shut up already!), but I think she held it together pretty well this time.

After listening to his lungs and looking in his throat, the EMT told me they could take him on to the hospital in the ambulance, but in his opinion, that wasn't necessary.  He suggested that I call our pediatricians' office and take it from there.

The seven men left, the older girls took Little Man out in the yard to look at the firetruck, and I called the pediatricians' office.  The nurse told me to just keep an eye on him and that we would need to check his poop until the something presented itself.  At that moment, I realized that it was the little gold butterfly charm.  I remembered cleaning my room the day before my scheduled induction, and when I took the hose off the vacuum, that charm fell out.  It was a gift to the nine year old princess from her daddy, and obviously a treasured keepsake considering it was in the vacuum!

I had been able to contain myself until I called my older sister back, and then I couldn't get through the story without crying.  When my husband got home from work, I really lost it.  Of course, I was a hot mess of hormonal fluctuations at that point anyway!

The next day, I had the glorious job of searching through the poop, with no results.  Then the day after that, Little Man went to spend the day with my mother in law and sister in law.  I got a text from my sister in law asking if the poop still needed to be checked.  I told her just to bag it up for me to do later.  No way was I asking anyone else to do that for me.  She texted back and said Nana offered to do it.  A few minutes later, I got another text saying Nana found the butterfly. 

When I told the girls that the something had been found and what it was, the Princess said, "Oh no!  I loved that thing!"  Really?  Then why did I find it IN THE VACUUM?  She wanted to keep it, and Nana had assured me it was clean.  She made a concoction of three different cleaning supplies and soaked it all day.  I think maybe it was divine intervention that the butterfly is lost.  I really don't think my germaphobe Princess would have ever gone near it again!

So, there you go.  Not so much a fairy/unicorn/meadow/sweet smelling flowers sort of story.  More like a why we love Nana, and why my son has caused more drama in his two and a half years than his big sisters ever have sort of story!