TODDLER TRIALS: a nose, a button and a trip to hospital

So, with Big Sis is safely in bed, and I can finally sit down and process this horrendous day.

Two weeks ago I posted about her first attempt to use her nostril as a storage compartment. I naively said that I hoped this would be her first and last foray into nasal packing, but it appears I simply tempted fate. In the days that followed, I found myself removing an assortment of foodstuffs – including a green pea, a chunk of roast chicken, and some rice. Mmmmmm.

But this morning she excelled herself. Somewhere, somehow, she’d found one of those mushroom-shaped covered buttons, and wedged it up her left nostril. Up until now I’ve managed to remove the alien nose objects by blocking the other nostril and getting her to blow. This time, however, the button was completely jammed, with the sharp ‘stalk’ digging painfully into her tender cartilage.

My GP’s office fobbed me off, so I took her down to the local NHS walk-in clinic, where the nurse tried to get to the button with a pair of tweezers. After several attempts it became clear it was too far back, and too tightly crammed, so I was packed off to paediatric casualty at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital.

We were seen by a lovely woman doctor, who decided to attempt the tweezer approach first. It was clear that Big Sis wasn’t going to take it lying down, or in any other position for that matter, so we had to call on a nurse for back up.

Clearly used to dealing with struggling kids, she came prepared with a sheet to swaddle Big Sis to keep her as still as possible. It was a great idea, and would probably have worked for 99 percent of kids, except that Big Sis has inherited her father’s freakish muscle strength. We ended up with four of us – me, a doctor, and two nurses – all holding a different swaddled body part, battling to keep her still.

She was screaming, her face totally drenched with tears, her eyes pleading with me to rescue her. I felt like the nastiest Mum in the universe. When we finally gave up she launched herself into my arms and clung to me like a baby Koala. Then she climbed into her stroller, buckled herself in, and tearfully cried ‘Bye bye!’, begging me to take her home.

But, of course, I couldn’t. So it was back up on to the bed where the screaming, sobbing and struggling started all over again. I was actually sweating from the effort of trying to hold her still. This time the doctor tried a suction pipe, and managed to pull the button down a bit, but still not far enough to remove. There was talk of sending her up to the Ear Nose & Throat specialist, or even knocking her out with general anaesthetic.

‘I’ve got one more idea,’ the doctor suggested. ‘It’s called the Mother’s Kiss.’

It involved me pinching the unblocked nostril closed, sealing my mouth over hers, and blowing sharply to try and force the button out. On the first two attempts I just succeeded in scaring the hell out of her, and making her cry again. But on the third attempt something flew out like a bullet and pinged against my palm. The bloody button!

All four of us let out out an audible sigh of relief. In total, it had taken more than four hours to remove.

‘Well done Mum!’ the swaddling nurse exclaimed. Then she reappeared with a water for me, and an apple juice for Big Sis. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked me sympathetically. ‘That must have been hard for you too.’

I was really touched by that, actually. You hear so many bad things about NHS staff, that the wonderful doctors and nurses are often overshadowed, and not given the credit they deserve. She was right too – it’d been absolutely horrific to pin down my distressed, screaming child when every bone in my body just wanted to snatch her up and give her a cuddle.

I left the hospital completely drained, but pleased that awful day was behind me. Now Big Sis and I could go home, watch Roary the Racing Car, and have some long overdue cuddles.

Unfortunately, my day from Hell wasn’t over yet…