In my 7 years of being a mom I had never had to call the Poison Control Center. Yesterday afternoon I went to lay the baby down for a nap. My other boys were watching Wild Krats and seemed pretty involved in the program so I left them to it. A few minutes later I hear my 3 year old screaming bloody murder so I quickly lay the baby down and run out to find that in those few short minutes he had gotten his potty step and brought it over to the kitchen counter and reached up to the spice rack. He knocked down a bottle of cinnamon and the lid came off and half the bottle poured right into his face.
You might think for a moment that this would be comical, kid with cinnamon all over his face, but quite the opposite actually. Have you ever seen a video of military training where the trainees are sent into a gas chamber and asked to remove their masks. When they come out they are often retching and have long streams of snot coming from their noses, it's pretty brutal. Well apparently inhaling cinnamon has a similar effect. My son was suffering all of that while also having cinnamon caked in his eyes. He had it all over his hands which he was also rubbing into his eyes making the situation even worse.
I grabbed him and threw him into the shower and started flushing his eyes out immediately. Luckily my husband walked in the door right at this time (welcome home, honey!) so he was able to get into the shower with him and continue to flush his eyes while I figured out what else we needed to do. I looked online, if you Google "cinnamon in eyes" you will get all kinds of random things that will not be of any help. I ended up calling the Poison Control Center and speaking to a very nice woman who reassured me that I was taking the proper action and to continue to flush his eyes out for 20 minutes by just letting the water run over his head continuously and that she would call me back in 40 minutes to make sure everything was okay. When she called me back she informed me that if my son had any sensitivity to light, watering eyes or just continued to complain of eye pain I would need to take him straight to the ER. Thank God, he was okay. After the trauma of the situation wore off he settled down and fell asleep and woke up fine this morning.
I, on the other hand, spent the rest of the night feeling like the WORST MOM EVER. I was thinking how bad it was but that it could have been even worse, he could have gotten the chili powder or cayenne pepper. Not only had I not even considered the chance that my children would/could get into the spices, I have often seen and thought of projects to do to store my spices in cute ways that would actually put them in even more reach of my children!
Well, after this experience, I learned a lesson and put all of them away in a high cabinet where they can't be reached. This situation could have been much worse, inhaling cinnamon can cause the throat and airways to constrict which could lead to difficulty breathing and other complications that could have been much more severe. No matter how cute those baby food jar turned magnet spice jars are I would certainly make sure that they are stored up high at all times and out of reach of curious toddlers!
No comments:
Post a Comment