This Was Not in the Manual

If someone had told me before I had kids that I would have to physically hold them down so I could pour drops into their ear to wash out the canal full of wax and dried blood while my daughter screamed, "No, Mommy, I don't care if my ear feels better! Stop, Mommy! Ow, it hurts, it hurts!" and that when it was over she would only go to my husband for a hug and not let me touch her, I don't know if I would have agreed to all of this.


J woke up Thursday from her nap complaining that her ear hurt. Took her to the doctor that afternoon (The other two were on amoxicillan at the time for various things, what's one more?) to get checked out. The doctor looked in her right ear but couldn't see anything due to the large amount of wax in the canal. He got his little tool, had me hold her down (fun), and began digging to attempt to remove the wax. The tool he had was not working so he had to stop, go into another room, get yet another tool, and start again. Finally he removed a large chunk of wax, but there was still too much in her ear for him to determine if she had an infection. By this time she was hysterically crying, so I scooped her up and comforted her. He told me that he accidentally nicked the inside of her canal. There was no blood, it looked fine, we left with a prescription to fill in case she continues to complain about ear pain and instructions to give drops of equal parts hydrogen peroxide and water to clean out the wax. She was hysterical even after we got home, at one point crying, "I can't stop crying!" It was really pathetic.

That night she had a hard time falling asleep. Apparently she usually sleeps on her right side and laying on her ear hurt (understandably). When she woke up and came to me in the morning, I had to check myself to stop from gasping too loud. Her entire ear and side of her face were covered with dried blood. She hadn't realized this yet (though was puzzled at the red on her fingers) so I was able to casually clean off her cheek somewhat, but going near her ear made her scream and put her hands over it. I totally understood that she was terrified to let me go near her ear after the day before, but I had to clean the dried blood out of her ear. I worked on it with a warm washcloth several times that day and managed to clean all but the inner ear.

Which brings us to tonight.

Nothing says love like doing what needs to be done to make your child feel better even if it makes them scared of you in the short (oh, it had better be short) term. Really. Now if I could just convince myself of that....