Our First Trip to the ER

So obviously it was bound to happen.  And I was just bragging to my sister-in-law Friday night that in our 3 1/2 years of parenting we had yet to have to go to the emergency room (after almost having to take Colton earlier this week as he battled croop), so obviously karma was about to bite me...right?!?

Call it karma.  Or call it the joys of living with a little explorer.  Or just call it classic Levi (as one of my friends did!).  Whatever you want to call it, we ended up in the ER Sunday. 

While I was showering, Levi managed to open up an old bottle of blood pressure medication (that I had been prescribed while pregnant with him).  I swear I will go to the grave not knowing how the hell he managed to open a child safety bottle, but he did.  Luckily, I heard it open immediately and jumped out of the shower to find two pills on his tongue, and the broken up pieces of one on his tongue.  I got the two out and managed to scrape out some of the pieces, but we still weren't sure exactly how much he had actually swallowed.  I honestly wasn't that worried about it, but we called his pediatrician just to ask if it was a problem (which seems dumb now because clearly it was a problem!).  Anyway, the pediatrician basically said we needed to get him to the ER stat so they could monitor his heart rate and blood pressure.

So we went.  Everything checked out perfectly.  They even did an EKG on him which was good.  And poison control said we could go home and they would monitor us by phone for six hours.  But the doctor wasn't comfortable with that.  He said that without knowing how much Levi had ingested, it could be a major overdose (scary, huh!?!) and that he would feel more comfortable with us staying at the hospital for the next six hours to be monitored there.  

Luckily, the next six hours went by pretty uneventfully!  Levi's heart rate, blood pressure, and second EKG were all perfect, and we thankfully walked out of there six hours later! Levi managed to take a short snooze while there, and otherwise handled being  still for the day amazingly well (he was hooked up to a heart rate monitor all day, so he pretty much had to either sit with Josh or me).  I think he was just thrilled to get so many juices and Batman stickers from all the nurses who spoiled him!  But man, what a day!  So scary how quickly these little guys can get into mischief...and how dangerous that mischief can be!  

I'm sure this won't be our last journey to the ER over the course of our parenting career, but I sure hope it is.!