Thursday, July 31, 2008

Momma, Find kee-kee too

I had to take Jude to the hospital today for some sort of State Newborn Screen. Apparently this is his second one [where was the first one? Hopsital?]. So off I went with a two year old and newborn. To the hospital. To wait. Wait. Wait.


There was this though: While waiting in the lobby to get called back for our paperwork, Adrien spotted the Starbucks kiosk and the cookies therein. Had to have a cookie. He insisted upon screaming and whining at me that he had "Momma, Find kee-kee too" (he now puts the word to or too at the end of every sentence, whether it belongs there or not, and whether or not that's the proper place for it. Yay for prepositions. Is that a preposition? I went to art school...} I reassured him that yes, you found the cookies, but you don't need one. Man, I really wanted one. They looked good. What I really wanted was some sort of hot caffeinated beverage to go with the kee-kee...but alas, I didn't need that either. We finally got called back to admissions. The kee-kees were out of sight. Some scrawny old lady, who really seemed nice enough, did all my paperwork. Zillions of papers to sign. All so they can prick my baby's heel and squeeze the blood out until he screams so much, he stops screaming at all. I hate that, man.

Waiting wasn't too bad though. It's times like these that you park the stroller in front of the television in the waiting room and hope your kid likes soap operas. He didn't. He did, however, like using a pen [stolen from admissions] to color all over himself -- and punch holes in the piece of paper that has the privacy practice policy on it. It was great fun, and at the end of the day I didn't have to put up with too much screaming and I got a tattooed toddler out of it. When we got called into the lab for the blood work, the nurse made mention of Adrien's self doodling. Before she could show too much disdain, I reassured her that it kept him quiet.

Then they all marveled as I unfurled this and out came a baby. People are so fascinated by fabric.

2 comments:

Missy said...

Oh wow! I want to see a pic of you with the baby wrapped up! That is so cool! I love fabric and babies!

And the pen doodling...awesome, especially with a stolen pen! I hope it washes out ok, but it seems like a pretty harmless distraction.

Meanwhile, that heel prick thing is something that my prior boss and her colleagues used to help research the origins of childhood cancers. The obtain the spots submitted at birth from children who develope cancer and then they try to figure out if there are any common genetic things going on. The lab techs would literally use a hole puncher to get part of the spot and dissolve it to get the dna.

People can also screen for some conditions with them. And they can screen for exposure to certain chemicals.

Anyway, I hope that was not too big of a tangent. am sorry that it makes babies cry, but those little blood spots tell the world a whole lot about diseases.

Amy said...

Oh, I really like that fabric. They are so wonderful, My babies loved being in one of those. I really hope you didn't pay $75 dollars for that, though. I've never seen one so expensive!