Another vote for vomiting frequency depends on the child. When I first got out of college, I got a dog. Said dog vomited all the time (until we found a good food that didn’t upset his tummy and stopped letting him play with fuzzy toys). My best friend was thoroughly disgusted by my dog’s problem and was very vocal about how unbelievable it was that my dog was like that. Well, a few years later she had a child, who vomited every time he got worked up - much more often than my dog ever did. My son, on the other hand, has thrown up only twice in the nearly 4 years he has been alive.
So, it is all relative to the kid. And watch out for karma. Speaking of which, unless you are dying or bleeding…
How about waking up to “Mommy, where did all this blood come from?” to look over at said child and see a blood stain trailing from his mouth and a 6 inch diameter stain on his pillow? I would say that was the single most jarring moment of my parenthood. (He had a really bad cough and had broken a blood vessel in his throat, like a nose bleed further down, and coughed up a nice big pool of blood on his pillow. I had been sleeping next to him because I was worried about him. He had been coughins so hard he had broken blood vessels in his eyes, too, so they also looked like pools of blood. They tested him for pertussis, but it ended up just being a nasty virus.)
Thanks, everyone. This thread, plus spending time with my three cousins (10, 12, and 14 year old boys), has practically decided me against having children. We’ve already got a puking cat, thank you very much.
I’m not a parent, so I can’t speak for that side of things. But I do know how I once got my father moving faster than light.
I was sitting on the hood of a car, probably five years old, and he was on the porch. A fly landed on my arm. I blew on it, and it didn’t fly away. My subsequent screams were so high-pitched only a dog or a parent could hear them. Dad was at my side before the scream could even die out.
Of course, when I revealed that the issue was having a fly on my arm, he flicked it away and gave me a look of such despair that I’ll never forget it.
According to my mother, the danger I’m in is inversely proportional to the volume of my scream. So if it sounds like I’m dying, then I probably just stubbed my toe. But if I let out a teensy tiny “ow” then I probably am dying.
Now that the wife and I are expecting our first baby, I’m curious/afraid to see how many ways she’ll scare us. :eek:
When you live in our house you’ve got to be quick or be hidden or be her toy! The 4 cats and the dog have all learned to be scarce unless there is food to be had. In this case the cat decided to see what all the ruckus was about and took a chance at a cameo photo op.
The real mystery was why she did not marker her 4 1/2 month old brother - he can’t run away yet!
As a father of three children, I have had my share of “running to the rescue moments”. My oldest son stuck a steak knife up his nose(had a bloody nose for a little while, but was fine after that), and had stitches twice. One of those times was preceded by a statement that never has a good outcome, “Hey, Alex, watch this!” followed by a crash and scream. He hit his head on the fireplace mantle bricks and ended up with 17 stitches between his eyes.
My daughter (youngest of the three) at the ripe old age of three, has already had stitches twice.
But my middle son is the one that amazes me. When he was two years old, I was re-roofing the house. He climbed up the ladder and onto the roof. Since then, he has set himself on fire (singed his hair, and burned his finger while playing with matches on my bed), and ingested soft-scrub, bleach, and D-con. He, however, still has not had stitches.
What about that moment in a shop when you let go of his hand to look at something and seconds later turn to find him not there and your heart begins a lubricated slide to the depths of the pit of your stomach? I’ll never forget that. He was only yards away but I didn’t run there I materialised there.
Ahhh the heart stopping scream. Around the time I first noticed this thread my son screamed “MOMMY” at the top of his lungs, he was hysterical and his voice sounded very strange. I don’t remember going upstairs but suddenly there I was looking at my coffee table on fire. Apparently my husband had left a candle burning and my son tried to blow it out with a tissue. Of course the tissue catches fire so he drops it, thank goodness he dropped it on the table and not the rug. In the end all was good but the little man learned a lesson, the husband learned a lesson and I realized I can fly.
The silences. I still dread those. My kids had torn my covers off my bed and I told them to fix it. I was sitting downstairs and realized they weren’t giggling or jumping so I went up to investigate. I walk into my room and find my daughter holding a wiggling plastic trash bag. My son was inside the trash bag. My heart stopped. I couldn’t speak so I just rushed over and tore the stupid bag open to let him out. He was already panting for air by this time. Needless to say we had a long talk that night about trash bags and other things that seem fun but shouldn’t go over your head. I think I’ve aged 30 years just since I became a Mommy, I contribute every gray hair to my children.
Another vote for the SIGOS. Especially when you’ve got more than one child.
That, or one’s spouse screaming “I CAN’T FIND THE KIDS!!!”
Yeah, that happened to me once. Early one winter morning, I heard a “thump,” and nudged my husband to go check it out. It wasn’t a serious thump, and it wasn’t followed by any screaming, shrieking, or crying. So he got up, and a minute or so later, I hear the aforementioned scream from my husband.
I flew out of bed, and then I heard crying. It was coming from outside.
The “thump” that I’d heard had been the front door shutting. My daughter (Dianasaur), then not quite 4, had decided to take her then 18-month-old brother (Johnzilla) outside to play. In the street in front of the next-door neighbors’ house. In the snow. Dianasaur had a coat and boots on over her jammies, Johnzilla was just in his jammies. Sitting down, and he was the one crying.
I was barefoot and wearing only a tshirt. I flew outside (parents do sprout wings when necessary), and got there just as my two-doors-down neighbor did. He snatched up my son, and handed him to me. I thanked him profusely, grabbed my daughter’s hand, and took them both back into the house. Where I promptly sat down and cried.
The only punishment they got for that was seeing me cry. That really scared them. But it worked. So did putting eyehooks on the front and back doors, up high enough that they can’t reach them until they graduate college.
When my first baby was about four months old she had gotten sick and had been throwing up quite a bit (this from one who nearly NEVER spit up). She seemed to be getting better, but one night I woke up holding her upright over my arm while she threw up in her bed.
To this day I cannot remember hearing her retch, jumping out of bed, or picking her up. My husband had jumped up to turn on the light–I don’t remember that either, although he remembers all of it. All I know is that I went from dead sleep to holding her while she vomited–nothing in between is in my memory. Must be the fastest I’ve ever moved in my life!
That cough. You know, the one before blearghhhhhh (especially effective when they’re sitting next to guests at the dinner table).
The cell phone ringing, and hearing “…broken arm… bone sticking out… ambulance on the way…” (I actually drove off with the back door of the minivan open in my haste to get to the hospital - no, there were no children in the van at the time).
There’s always the classic, ::sound of toilet flushing:: “uh-oh.”
Actually the silence thing doesn’t get me moving fast. There are two of the little demons and silence usually indicates one of those rare occurrences when they’re collaborating on something particularly heinous. Silence makes me move stealthily, so I can catch the little perpetrators in the act.
I agree it’s easy to get numb to the various screams and cries. But there’s a slightly different pitch to a scream that is genuinely afraid. I’m amazed how a mama bird can pick out her chick’s squeals out of the 5000 other nesting birds on a beach, but when I hear that slightly different scream I’m usually half way across the room before I’ve consciously made a decision to move at all.
I remember one time when I was a kid. I was the youngest so by the time I came along mom was pretty much willing to let me juggle knives (tm Roseanne Barr?). Anyway, mom was getting older, obese, various health problems, drop foot from polio, etc. She worked nights and slept during the day. I has seen her deep fry things in oil, so figured I’d try it. I heated up some oil in a pan on the stove and it burst into flames. I let out one of those genuinely afraid “mom!!” I’d never seen that woman wake up and fly threw the house so fast in my life. When she burst into the kitchen I was almost more afraid of her than the flames on the stove.
Here’s one I heard at 5:30 am from daughter #3 of 4, who was 5-years old at the time: “Mum, wake up. What would happen if I at some poison out of the medicine cabinet?”
Got me up like a shot. Turned out it was an early morning hypothetical question.
A year later she awoke me at roughly the same time by shouting, “Mum, I think the neighbour’s house is on fire”.
Again I was up like a shot. It was smoke coming out of the neighbour’s chimney.
I needed a great laugh. Oh man, that’s just beautiful. That child is So delighted with her little self !!! I hope you burn these to a CD and have excellent prints made of these. They’re keepers.
I notice that the cat escaped entirely unscathed. Smart girl, your girl !
Silence in my house also meant messy disaster. I was at work. My kids were in my daughter’s room. Son is 4, daughter is 2 1/2. Wife realizes how nicely they’re playing, all quiet and peaceful. She peeks into the room.
It’s snowing…it’s a blizzard of baby powder. My son is waving the baby powder cannister around while they both laugh. It’s on the ceiling fan blades. It’s on the walls. It’s on all surfaces, including both living beings.
Good thing I wasn’t around, I’d have about died of the fine powder in my lungs. Apparently it took her minutes to bathe both kids, and hours to clean the room. Sounded funny from a distance.
Silence is so bad. When I had glass shatter against my arm, opening it up in two places, I didn’t say a word for a few moments. I just watched the blood pour. Then I very quietly said, " May I please have a towel? "
Oh, and I always always and always was the one to be vomited upon. Both kids. Year in and year out. I’d pick them up, they’d hit me with it. Never her. There’s no justice…
Me too. Once I was lying on my back on the livingroom floor, bouncing my firstborn on my legs (exercise and play rolled into one); I turned my head to hear her father say ‘maybe you shouldn’t do that so soon after a feeding’, when splat, the little dear spit up right in my ear!!!
Child #3 stood silently at the top landing… and managed to vomit over all three levels of the house, hitting her Dad square in the face as he came up the stairs to see why she was so quiet.
Oh, it doesn’t take very many occurances to burn the reflex into your hindbrain.
**Little Blank #1 ** was sitting on my lap after a long day of feeling unsettled while I watched T.V. he was in a onesy with a bib on as he’d been teething.
He calmed down, which I took to be a good sign.
Then a fount of vomit erupted from him like clowns in a circus car. I distinctly remember thinking ‘Whoah, the bib isn’t gonna catch all that.’
I then proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes with a rug shampooer cleaning in and around the couch and peeling the cold, damp, formulasoaked clothes off while Mrs. Blank gave the kid a bath. He was happy as a clam after the eruption.
There needs to be a device, similar to those stick on thermometers that says “Warning: Stomach Flu! Spewage imminent!”.
Oh, and Tanookie wins (and makes me fear the future).
