Penny Swallowing: The followup

I have had a request to know what happened. I've also already had my first search string on "child swallowed coin." So, I guess I should let y'all know the, if you'll excuse the word, outcome.

One of the big problems I had is that the preschooler's insides seem to work very slowly. They always have. When I took her to her to her 1 month well baby visit, they asked how many bowel movements she was having. The nurse about dropped the chart when I told her, "Once a week." She wasn't too reassured when I protested, "But, she's being breastfed!" Luckily the doctor didn't seem to think it was a big deal.

I've never been too sure how this translated into what's going on inside her. She certainly eats huge amounts of food (or used to - she has suddenly entered the toddler eating stage, for the first time ever. "Look, Mommy! I see food! I'm full now.") I think she just uses everything that goes in that little body very efficiently. I was hoping that was the case at any rate, because if everything was just moving very slowly then that would cause a problem with the penny.

Sure enough, she didn't have a bowel movement for the next couple of days. I held off on going to the doctor Monday because she still hadn't done anything. Luckily I didn't have to make a decision about what to do Tuesday, because she came running out Monday night, after going to bed, with the announcement that she needed to be changed.

Euww.

I'd talked to my mom about the whole thing, and she had suggested using toothpicks, which I thought was a brilliant suggestion. The toothpicks worked well.; I highly recommend them if you are ever in the same situation.

I'll spare you the gruesome details. Suffice it to say, the coin was there. It was not a penny, it was a dime, which was comforting, but now makes me worry about my daughter's ability to tell the difference between a dime and a penny! The preschooler watched the whole process with great fascination, and then asked to have the coin back. I told her, "No!!!" and threw it away with the pull-up.

Never doing that again would be just fine with me.

Shudder