Don't Hurt My Kid!

Brianna had her 8 week well baby check this week. The doctor says she is "thriving." (Well, of course!)


But the thing about the 8 week check-up, of course, is that it's time for shots. It's wonderful that we now have vaccines to prevent babies from developing life-threatening illnesses, but is there a mother alive who has not gone through hell holding her beloved baby while a doctor sticks a needle in her arm, listening to the screams.

"I'm so glad it's over with! I think I cried harder than she did!" Laurel wrote.

I remember those days, holding a tiny baby, knowing that in a few seconds he would be screaming, but knowing that the brief screams were better than what could happen if a child were to get diptheria or tetanus or whooping cough or any of the diseases that they vaccinate against these days.

If you have kids, sooner or later you're going to have to hurt them in order to help them.

Jeri broke her leg when she was four. She was walking to a friend's house, a few houses from our own. One of the children in the house made a turn into his driveway on his bike, and the pedal on the bike happened to clip Jeri's leg. I didn't see it, but I remember someone carrying her, screaming, into the house.

We realized that it wasn't just a simple injury, so we rushed her off to the Kaiser emergency room, where they diagnosed a greenstick fracture. Imagine that you have a twig and you go to break it in half, but it doesn't break all the way, part of it sticking up, still attached to the other part. That's what the fracture was. In order to set the leg, they had to press the bone back into place. Lately I've read of doctors who give kids pain killers or inject the area around where the procedure was going to be done, to minimize the pain. But they didn't do that for Jeri. They just had me stand at her head and pin down her arms while the ortho tech pushed the bone into place while she screamed and screamed and screamed.

I still cringe when I think what the four-year old Jeri must have thought about her mother helping this big scary guy hurt her so badly.

There were other times when it made me cry that I had to hurt one of our children. Ned didn't break a bone until he was 10 and fell out of a tree in Ashland, Montana, while we were on a camping trip. (I told that story in its entirety here.) We took him to see a local doctor, but he couldn't set the leg until the swelling went down, so we had to drive all the way from where we were back to California, and each time we had to move him, it was excruciating for him, bone rubbing against bone.

David fell getting into the car when he was about a year and a half old. He split his lip and stitches were required. (He was, later, very proud of his fat lip and happily posed for the camera.)

Thinking I would be an hysterical mother, they took him away from me in the emergency room and took him into a room behind closed doors to stitch him up. I asked if I could stay with him, but they firmly told me no, though I reassured them that I do not fall apart in a crisis. They wouldn't let me stand by him, but did let me stay in the room, safely out of the way.

They tied him down to something they call a "papoose board," where his arms and legs are held tightly in place so they can work on them. They were completley unaware that he was working his hand through the straps and was about ready to grab the hand of the person who was stitching him up. I rushed to his head and held his hands down. I hated being there, listening to him cry, but, stangely enough he was calmer than he had been before because I was there, even though I wouldn't let him move so the medical people could finish their work.

But I still shudder, yet again, thinking of my part in inflicting pain on my precious little baby.

The tears a mother sheds through her kids' growing up years continue, with broken bones, falls, stitches, and all the things that little kids go through. It never gets easier. Laurel has a lot of tears ahead of her.

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On June 17, gay couples will be able to start getting married, but the fight isn't over. There is still a group hoping to place a state constitutional amendment on the ballot in November (and others are trying reintroduce the bill that would place discrimination against gays and lesbians in the U.S. Constitution). If you, like me, believe that marriage is a civil matter, not a religious one and that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same status as their straight neighbors, please sign this petition. At the very least, please go to the web site and read the information there, learn the facts, and be able to explain it when you hear people speaking out against same sex marriage.