Not Me Monday! January 19, 2009

My favorite way of letting my OCD worries fly away. Confessing what I did not do in the past week, in McMama style. So I can be free from replaying those things in my mind, and move on to bigger and better (present) things.

This past week, after it began to look like Mallorie might have developed an allergy to latex, I did NOT spend several minutes wondering how we might still be able to let her keep (and wear) her cool Old Navy socks with the rubber nonslip tread. I would never have done that simply because those were my favorite of her socks. Especially not after the suspect reactions she had were affecting her FEET! And one foot seemed to be affected because of one of these socks!
I am not still mourning the loss of Mallorie's ability to wear cool Old Navy and Baby Gap nonslip tread socks. With the tread made of rubber. "Nonslip" for a baby who cannot walk, so the only slipping or skidding she's going to do is if we manage to somehow let her fall off the couch again!!!

But I have so many of these cute socks, and in so many sizes. :(

When I heard one of Mallorie's hospital nurses telling me this cool story about how someone invented a technique for changing a colostomy dressing, I did NOT spend the next 10 minutes trying to figure out how to adapt that technique (involving use of a tampon) for containing Mallorie's profuse watery diarrhea.

I also did not almost stop her bowels up. Twice. By mixing baby barley cereal with food and putting it down her tube, because I'd read that oatmeal and barley were grains highest in soluble fiber, and hoped it would thicken the poop. Oh, but it did thicken the poop, ... to the texture of rubber bouncy balls that shot out like cannonballs with a "wash" of watery diarrhea behind them. So once she had strained and cried throughout much of one day when I'd given the barley cereal, ... I certainly didn't try the same cereal AGAIN, on another day!!

And I did not hold onto a bowl of oatmeal that came on the breakfast tray one morning in the hospital, but hid it, because I didn't want Dr. B to see it. Because oatmeal is the other high-in-soluble-fiber grain that we already KNOW has stopped Mallorie up in the past. Scary stopped up, so I woke up in a cold sweat in the nighttime, after one day when I had given her 1/2 cup of steel cut oats. I was sure she was going to need emergency surgery for a bowel obstruction. But this time, if I HAD done this hiding of the bowl of oatmeal, it would have been because she was still having profuse watery diarrhea, and would have needed the stoppage. You know?

Plus, it's so cool to be able to put real foods in that danged tube! But, I didn't do it, right? Good thing.

And I didn't make a post about chairs yesterday, instead of about what happened the previous weekend that got us into the hospital again with Mallorie, 3rd time in 2 months. Because I'm not one for procrastinating or using any other form of avoidance of painful things. I just plow straight on in, and face things, so I can move past them. But, if I DID do such a thing, you might have to be patient with me. I'm just not ready yet.

And I didn't spend all day researching my favorite bulb syringe (AKA nasal aspirator, AKA ear and nose ulcer syringe, whatever that means), to see if it is latex-free. ALL day. And most I could figure out was that it might be made of PVC. Whatever that is. Which might be latex-free.

And I must not have then realized that the one I have (and love, because it's such a great color, and better fit for older nostrils than the U.G.L.Y. red ones you get to bring home from most L&D experiences) has to be at least 14 years old. Because I think it came home from the hospital with Hannah. So even IF they are latex-free PVC now, they might have been latex rubber 14 years ago. :(