First call to Poison Control

What a day it has been-- first let me say-- everyone is absolutely fine.

A friend and her son came over for a play date this AM-- in the midst of our playing my friend handed her son a big bottle of generic Acetaminophen that was sitting on a shelf to shake like maraca. No big deal-- our boys have certainly held a child-proof bottle of meds before. In this case, however, my friends kid was just kind of shaking it about and then put it down. She took it from a high shelf and I guess (given the later results) that it was not snapped closed properly. They left about an hour later, and with both boys playing on the floor I took the cushion off the high chair to brush off the bits of Cheerio and cracker I'd been seeing lurking in the crevices. A few seconds later I looked down to see Willy sitting with an open bottle of Acetaminophen with a handful of pills on the floor around him. Hmmmm. Not good. I checked out his mouth, and couldn't see anything. No bits and pieces seemed to be around his mouth-- no powder, nothing.
I tried to think as logically as possible as I looked under the sofa to make sure no pills were in the open environment. First, I thought, okay if he had this in his mouth for any period of time and was sucking on it-- we would know. He would be making a face, trying to spit it out, something like that. This is the kid that barely eats the meat-veg mix-- he would not silently eat something bitter and foul, right. Then I reminded myself that Will is not much on the 'swallowing food' thing. He will eat completely mashed baby food, but our few forays into small bits of apple and cheese have turned into gag-able moments. So, with this reasoning in mind I thought if he'd tried to get a grown-up size pill down I would have heard the gagging.

Of course thinking logically is one thing, and being worried about the little bug sitting in front of you is another. So, I called Mike to get some reassurance. He was thinking along the exact lines as I was, but still I wondered 'what if'. So, after calling Mike I tried to google, something like "baby eat Acetaminophen signs and symptoms", but didn't get much.

So, thinking of cousin Michael and the fireplace incident, I called Poison Control. They were great, of course-- really helpful and reassuring. They told me if Will had 3.5 pills or more it would be toxic based on his weight. They asked questions like, "is it possible to tell from the container how many are missing"... uummm.. the reason it was on the shelf in the first place is that we take it a lot-- and it is a bottle of 500, so that wouldn't work. The most helpful thing they did was tell me what signs and symptoms he might experience if he'd ingested the pills. Vomiting, stomach upset, lethargy. Ever since the incident he had been playing happily, and I really got the sense that he'd not had any-- but home alone with no car I was most frightened of what my possibilities might be in an emergency-- Mike was at least 30 minutes away by car. I couldn't think of a friend closer in driving distance than that. I resolved to call 911 if Will showed any symptoms.

By this time it was approaching nap time, and the poison control lady said to feed him his regular bottle, put him down for a nap, but keep an eye on him. He fell asleep, and she called mid-nap and told me to go wake him up to make sure all was well. It is nearly physically impossible for me to wake up a sleeping baby. About that time I heard him coughing-- did I mention they both have a cough and runny nose-- and he was also hitting a sort of mid-nap crying spell. At that point he was crying and coughing, so much so that he gagged and spit up a bit. Uugh. Of all the days to gag yourself coughing-- please not on the one day I am monitoring you for poisons, buddy! As I got him all cleaned up it was clear he was not vomiting-- but that this was just a weird coincidence, but still I was TOTALLY FREAKED OUT, so I called Mike for about the 5th time and he decided to come home. The heat index was 106 Fahrenheit, so he was ready to call it a day. As I played with Will awaiting Mike's return I felt again that he had not had anything, but that at this point was just a tired baby with a bad cough. But what a day.