A Series of Unfortunate Events: Part 1

Well, we've had an interesting few days around here. I guess you could say we've been accident prone :-/ Thankfully, everyone is fine, and I'm praying that we won't have any more incidents for quite a while!

I mentioned in my Week in Review post that Jude had a little run in with a millipede on Saturday morning, and it's actually kind of a comical story now, but it was anything but comical at the time. David wasn't home, and the kids and I were in the living room watching a movie. Jude crawled into the kitchen, which is right off the living room, and I didn't think anything of it. Our house is good and child-proofed, and we have gates to keep the kids in the safe rooms. Jude was in the kitchen by himself for maybe 10 seconds before I followed him in there. I heard him kind of coughing/choking, and I really thought he was seriously choking on something. I grabbed him and looked in his mouth, but there was nothing in there. He had his tongue out of his mouth, and he was crying/screaming/coughing, and I noticed that he had this weird smelling orange-y brown stuff on his lips. I freaked out. I could not IMAGINE what he could have eaten. We had just been in the kitchen, and there was nothing in the floor, and he didn't have anything in his hands when he crawled in there. I looked down to where he had been sitting and saw a millipede. (At the time, I was calling it a centipede, but we discovered it's actually a millipede after some internet research. We get these things in our house ALL the TIME. They have never really been a problem, because Aubrey is scared of them and stays FAR away. They pretty much just curl into little balls when we see them, and we throw them away. No big deal. Until now.) It entered my mind that maybe Jude had tried to put the millipede in his mouth, but I didn't think that would explain the orange stuff on his mouth.

At this point, Jude and I were both having a conniption. I was terrified that he had eaten something horrible, and he was still sticking his tongue out and crying/coughing. I called David frantic, and he had me pour water on the millipede and see if it turned orange when it got wet. I thought there was no way, but sure enough.... when I touched it with a paper towel, it was orange! So, I felt slightly better now that we knew what we were dealing with, but only slightly. Jude was still HIGHLY upset, and I didn't know if those bugs were poisonous.

David told me to call Poison Control, so I did. I felt like a NUT CASE telling them what had happened, and they sounded thoroughly confused. I was still calling the thing a centipede at this point, and the lady from Poison Control was like, "Ummm, if he had put a centipede in his mouth, it would have bitten the tar out of him, and he would be screaming." First of all, who knew centipedes BITE? Not me! And also, did this lady not hear me say that my child was screaming and coughing and sticking his tongue out?? (I had gotten Jude slightly calmed down by this point, but he was still acting weird and sticking out his poor little tongue.) The call ended when the lady basically said she didn't know what to tell me since she didn't really know what they were dealing with (pretty sure she thought there was NO WAY he had really tried to eat a centipede), but to watch his tongue to make sure it didn't start to swell. Umm, excuse me? Tongue swelling?! So, I called David frantic again. He talked me down a bit, but a few minutes later, I noticed that Jude's top lip was swollen. So, I freaked out AGAIN and called the pediatrician. The nurse was super sweet and made me feel a little more sane. She said that enough time had passed since "the encounter" to know that Jude wasn't going to have a major reaction and not be able to breathe. I was totally prepared to load the kids and the millipede into the car and hightail it to the doctor's office, but she said that wasn't necessary. She told me to give him Benadryl and watch him closely. So, that's what I did all morning. I was a helicopter mom, and Jude was not out of my sight for half a second. He perked up and acted normal except for sticking his tongue out occasionally.

My mom looked online and discovered that the centipede was, in fact, a millipede. We found several articles saying that millipedes don't actually bite, but they do put off some kind of poisonous liquid (hence the brownish orange liquid on Jude's lips and tongue), but that it isn't super harmful to humans. It did say that it could cause discoloration of the skin, blisters, and a burning sensation. Sure enough, the next day, Jude's lips were red and he had several blisters on them. I felt SO bad for him. It was hard for me to even look at his poor mouth because it looked super painful to me :( He never seemed bothered by it after it first happened, and it's almost completely back to normal now. The whole thing was really such a scary experience, mainly because it happened so fast, and I had no clue what was wrong at first. It was kind of humorous to tell people that Jude tried to eat a millipede and got burned when someone would notice his mouth. (Not many people even noticed, though.) Thankfully, he's fine, and I'm hoping that he'll hightail it the other direction if he sees one of those again. I'm kind of doubting it, though. He is ALL BOY, after all! ;)

This post has gotten long enough as it is, so I'll save Aubrey's "unfortunate event" for the next post.