It's a Mom's Job

This morning I found Jordan eyeing a glycerine suppository (in the wrapper) that I had unwisely left on the bathroom counter. He was saying, “Chocolate”.... Thankfully I got there in time to stop him sampling it!

(He was suffering quite a bit with constipation yesterday so that’s why it was out there.)

Anyway, this post is not about constipation (luckily). I was thinking instead about a mother’s job of keeping her children safe, and how that mistakes like that (and worse) can happen so quickly.

We go to such great lengths to protect our young ones from accidents, dangers, germs etc, but it’s almost impossible to safeguard them totally. There’s always something lurking around...

A friend of mine once found her son in the bathroom, teething on the toilet brush!! He had crawled in there while she was carefully washing and sterilising his bottles!! (I’m sure his immune system got a good boost that day!!)
                                                                              ~     ~     ~

This reminds me of something that happened when Daniel was about 2 years old. He came to me one morning holding his cup and asked for some juice. I can’t remember what I was doing at that moment, but my hands were full and I couldn’t help him just then, so I asked him nicely to just wait a minute and I’d get him his juice. He smiled sweetly at me and nodded, and went off happily down the passage.

It was only a few minutes later that one of the others started yelling (the way kids yell when they think they’re being done out of some treat...):

“Where did Daniel get blue colddrink from???”

There was Daniel standing in the passage with a smug smile on his little face, holding his cup which was full of a blue liquid, and sipping from it!!


It took me only a few seconds to work that one out - - - The only place in our house where there was blue liquid anything was.... in the toilet!!!

Oh my goodness!!

I snatched the cup from his hands and smelled the contents.

And gagged!!

It was, indeed, toilet water!!! Toilet water that came from a toilet that had not been flushed!!!

(Note: I had two preschoolers... and thankfully it was liquids-only..)

I threw the contents of the cup out and washed Daniel’s hands and face (which was about all I could wash of him since the problem was inside!) and then phoned my mother in a panic!!

And she laughed at my story!! And laughed and laughed!!!

I couldn’t see why it was so funny! My son drank toilet water!! Not only was there pee in it, but chemicals from the ‘Jeye’s Bloo’ - designed to kill germs and things, that could have who knows what effect on him!

My mother stopped laughing long enough to assure me that the worst that could happen would probably be that he would throw up, and that I shouldn’t worry, and thanks for the laugh!!!

Well, he had absolutely no ill-effects at all, didn’t even throw up, and has grown up into a healthy, solid young man, so it couldn’t have done anything to him.

I think it took me quite a while to get over it, though!

                                                                     
11 years, 3 more babies and a lot more experiences later, I can laugh at the memory of that day! Daniel gets very embarrassed to hear the story – of course he can’t remember a thing! (For a while the term ‘toilet water’ was even an insult used among the kids.)

And one day, if my daughter has to phone me in a state, crying that her child just drank water from the toilet – I’ll probably laugh too!!!