Bad Mom award

Although it has been a week since all of this happens, I would like to document it and PRAY that I never have a week like this AGAIN!!!  I try so so hard to be a good mom.  I try to make nutritious meals and teach Joie important things, and give her all the love and attention she needs...but sometimes I seem to fall short.

Early last week, either Monday or Tuesday, Joie and I were at Smith's and we were having the awesome battle that we have frequently at the grocery store called, "I refuse to sit in this cart".  I don't care that she hates the cart because I know she is safe when she is sitting there buckled in but for some reason this one day I just couldn't handle her.  I put her in the cart and she was screaming bloody murder and I swear people were giving me those looks like "you're her mom, can't you do something to calm her down" and "oh that poor child".  For some reason on this particular day it was really getting to me and decided to let her get out of her chair and just stand in the cart.  I justified it by saying I was just getting a 2 or 3 things and it would only take a minute.  So we did our shopping and proceeded to the checkout stand and Joie handed me the things in the cart so we could pay for them.  While they were scanning our items Joie started fussing that she wanted some candy and I said, "No, sit on your bum bum, you don't need any candy".  That obviously wasn't what she wanted to hear and she leaped out of the cart to get chocolate and fell out on to the hard floor.  Well if I was concerned about the looks people were giving me before you should have seen the looks I was getting now.  I swear on my life people were considering calling Child Protective Services because they thought I was the worst mom.  I learned from this experience that I know when I'm being a good mom and I was being a good mom keeping her buckled into the cart.  I need to NOT care what kind of mom other people think I am.  No bumps or bruises showed up right away but the next day she had an AWFUL black eye...poor baby. 

So a mere 3 days later my "bad mom" streak got worse.  I went to a friends house to help her pack because she was moving.  I have gone over these few minutes again and again in my mind thinking I could have done things differently but I guess what I learned from both of my stories is that no matter how hard you try to be a great mom you can never just stare at your children 100% of the time and prevent everything from happening.  So I'm helping my friend pack and we are figuring out where to start and looking at the task ahead of us and I glance over at Joie and she had found an open bottle of pills on the ground and had put a bunch in her mouth and was saying "candy".  Needless to say I completely flipped out and ran over to her and fish hooked all that crap out of her mouth and throat immediately.  I grabbed the bottle to see what my child had accidentally ingested and it was XANAX!!!  Now I'm no drug expert but I have seen a half of a Xanax make full sized adults act crazy.  I have also seen it act as a freakin rhino sedative and basically put people into mini comas.  So now I'm even more freaked out.  I was pretty sure I had gotten them all out of her mouth but I just felt sick to my stomach about it and decided to take her to the hospital just to be safe.  I called my parents just to make sure I wasn't completely over reacting and they said, Oh my gosh drive straight to the hospital even if you aren't sure she swallowed any.  So I'm not going to lie I feel so bad for little Joie because I was basically a lunatic and completely freaking out and I think I scarred her half to death.  We got to the hospital promptly and they immediately admitted us.  The doctor came in right away and I told him I was nearly certain she didn't swallow any but I wasn't 100% sure.  The doctor said to me, "Oh it is so good that you brought her in.  Xanax is so dangerous, especially for small children.  Even if she didn't swallow one and just a fraction of one dissolved in her mouth it could slow her heart rate to the point that she couldn't breathe on her own and we would have to hook her up to machines to breathe for her".  So now I feel a little better because he validated that I wasn't crazy for bringing her to the hospital when I wasn't sure she had even taken anything, but mostly I feel 100 times worse because now I'm afraid that at any moment my child is going to stop breathing!  So they wanted to monitor her for 5 or 6 hours because she was too small for them to pump her stomach.  She also wasn't allowed to sleep because that might be a side effect of the xanax and they wanted her to try and stay alert the entire time she was being monitored.  Anyway, she was totally fine, her heart rate never got too low and I took her home later that evening.  All I wanted to do was hold her and cry and say "I'm sorry" a million times because I felt like it was all my fault.  When we got home and finally sat down I started crying, which I think was mostly because I was so stressed and I finally relaxed a little, and Joie came over and sat on my lap and wiped my tears and said "Momma's boo boo" pointing to the tears on my cheeks.  I said, "oh it's ok, mommy just loves you so much" and I guess she just didn't like that I was crying because she started to cry and put her head on my chest and said "sorry momma".  It was pretty much the sweetest thing ever and it made everything feel just a little better.

So now you all know who deserves the "bad mom of the year" award.  It was a horrible week and I still haven't completely recovered and now I'm sure Joie hates me for hovering and never giving her a moments peace because I'm so paranoid something will happen to her.