OD or False alarm??

Picture this... I am getting ready to go for a coffee this morning, I have my coat on, my gloves and hat and I have Kaleb almost ready to go, with a coat, shoes and hat. The only left to get ready is his milk and cookies in case he needs a peanut free snack while I enjoy my coffee and chat with Fizzy. I leave Kaleb, playing with Josh and the dog for just moments in the mud room while I run in to get the last few things I will need for our morning out together. I am gone less than five minutes, and the door is open the whole time. I can hear everything they are doing.

I grab everything, and am bending over to pick Kaleb up to put him in the stroller when I notice that there is an open pill bottle on the floor, and little pills spread all over the place, some are broken. Somehow Kaleb and or Josh has gotten into my Yoga bag and removed the pills I keep in there. I admit here that the first words from my mouth are not nice words and can't be repeated here without my Blog being reported. My heart stops and I can actually feel the fear running in my veins.

Tim and I collect both kids up and study them, it's Kaleb who is closest to the offending mess, and it's Kaleb who is known to put anything and everything in his mouth. (Josh is a little more discerning).  Off to the ER we go, Tim drops me off with Kaleb and takes Josh home. The nurse asks a million questions that I can't answer (how many pills were in the bottle?, how many did he eat? etc. etc.). I can't tell her if he ate any, let alone how many he may have gotten into. Guilt weighs heavily on me and I want to yell at her, or anyone because of my own stupidity! What was I thinking?!?

Thankfully, when the doctor came in and he deduced that Kaleb probably hadn't ingested anything or we would already be seeing the effects of the drugs. He suggests that I get a better bottle to put the meds and sends me home. I pack him up and head home via bus.

That was at 11:45 this morning, we were home by 1:30pm, and here I am at 5pm still shaking like a leaf. We do everything we can for our kids, we keep them fed, warm, we buy them expensive toys and teach them everything we can. In the case of our kids, we deal with heart defects, peanut and egg allergies and all the doctors appointments that those things mean. We go out of our way to make sure these kids are taken care of, we sacrifice our own comfort and happiness to ensure that they are happy, and in less than five minutes it can all end with one stupid mistake, one gap in time when they aren't being watched like hawks.

I slammed into the wall of responsibility today, whoever said that keeping kids alive and healthy was easy was terribly mistaken, or it's just me and I suck at this parenting thing after all?!