The Googly Eye

It has been a long week with an interesting ending. Exactly one week ago, my 9 month old went on a nursing strike for no apparent reason. She was a little extra fussy, clingy, and sleeping even less than usual. No new teeth were coming in, no fever, and she mostly seemed fine besides not wanting to nurse. This is the girl who eats every two hours on the dot, so a nursing strike is very abnormal for her. 

We stayed home most of the week due to exhaustion and tried everything we could think of to make her more comfortable and figure out what was going on. I chalked it up to a developmental thing. She had just started crawling so I figured her little body was just too busy to want to sit still and rest or nurse. Six days later she started acting more normally but was still nursing funny and acting a little off. 

As I was changing her diaper, she stated blabbering to me and lifted her head up simultaneously. That’s when I noticed it. Something black on the roof of her mouth. I immediately stuck my finger in her mouth (a scary thing to do with a baby who has six teeth!) and felt something hard. My firth thought was an abscess, because what else could it be? With my mom on the phone, semi freaking out, I kept trying to get a better look at what was going on. 

A googly eye. 

You read that right. A little googly eye, you know, like the ones you use for arts and crafts? Yep. A googly eye was stuck to the roof of my child’s mouth. Cue meltdown and slight panic. How long had that been there? How do I get it out without her choking on it? Time to call the hubby. We agreed the best thing to do was to try to get it out ourselves and just go from there. Thankfully, I was able to pop it out fairly easily with my finger and there were no more tears involved from her or me. 

Next, cue the mom guilt. How did I miss this? Obviously, this was the reason for her nursing strike. I clean the house five billion times a day and never leave her unsupervised except for bathroom runs. But here she had been with a googly eye stuck to the roof of her mouth for exactly one week without my knowledge. Then something overwhelmed the mom guilt. 

Gratefulness. 

Grateful that she didn’t choke on it in her sleep. Grateful it didn’t damage her mouth. Grateful I was able to get it out easily. Grateful that she didn’t shed a tear. Grateful that I found it. So very grateful. 

This is one of those stories we will look back and laugh at one day. I’m sure of it. Kids have a funny way of being able to make you cry, laugh, and panic all within seconds of each other. My girls certainly know how to keep me on my toes. Life really would be so boring without them, ha!

Do you have any stories of your kiddos that seemed crazy at the time but now you look back at them with laughter? I would love to hear them!