I Just Saved My Son

This afternoon I was in the middle of writing a blog post on my other blog, when I heard my son coughing in his room.  It sounded like he was choking on something, and when I ran in there he was sitting up in bed and he was crying and trying to cough up something but he couldn't.  I didn't know what he could be choking on, but I stuck my finger in his throat and I felt something metal.

I have four metal hair clips that he has put in his mouth before, so I keep them on my standing desk so he can't reach them.  And it was one of these hair clips that I felt in his throat.  He must've climbed onto my desk chair and taken the clips before I put him down for his nap.

I grabbed him out of bed and held his torso over my arm, face toward the floor, and reached down his throat with my finger and fished it out.  I quickly checked around the room and found the other three clips, so I knew he had only put one in his mouth and he was in the clear.

I held him in my arms and said reassuring things to him while he cried and caught his breath.  The little guy was scared and now I'm sure his throat is sore, too.  But he's safe now, and he's happy and doing okay.

I think I'm more shaken up than he is.  I was calm and methodical when getting the hair clip out, but now that it's over I'm shaking.  Usually during his nap time I'll watch music videos online or play a video game or take a nap, but I'm so glad that today I decided to write instead.  If I was asleep or if I had my headphones on, I wouldn't have heard him coughing and I don't know what would have happened.  He was able to cough and cry around the hair clip when I went in there, so his throat wasn't completely blocked, but that could have changed, and I might have walked in there an hour later to a dead child.

I am beyond frustrated that he hasn't moved past this putting-things-in-his-mouth stage yet.  This kid will be three years old in a few months and he's still putting things in his mouth that aren't food.  And he can't yet understand the simple sentence, "No toys in the mouth, just food."  After he had calmed down I went through all of his toys and I'm putting away the few toys we have that could fit in his mouth.  He can have them back when he's older.

I called Mc afterward and told him what happened.  We agreed that we'll just have to keep him away from mouth-sized toys until he's past this stage, whenever that happens.  We're also going to keep our bedroom door locked when we're not in here so that he can't climb on our chairs and reach things that we're keeping up high specifically to keep them out of his reach.  And I'm going to have to say "No toys in the mouth, just food" to him multiple times a day until he gets it.