One of the things that I have always feared as a single mom is, what if something happens to my daughter where I need to rush her off to the ER? Do I REALLY have to do that by myself? I can handle sickness, cooking, laundry, grocery shopping, daycare, and whatever else. But the thought of having to deal with something tragic with my little girl, on my own, is a terrifying thought.
This recently resurfaced the other night as my daughter was enjoying her post-dinner dessert of purple seedless grapes. I was washing dishes, chatting away with her, as she enjoyed her snack at the dinner table. All of the sudden, it got really quiet. I looked up and she was turned to me with very large eyes, tears streaming down her face, red as a tomato, waving her arms around her face. I can't even begin to describe the look of panic that was on her face. And her expression was so contorted she almost looked like a creature from The Ring or one of those creepy movies with a distorted ghost-like girl figure as the main character.
I immediately rushed to her, leaned her forward with my left hand around her chin, patting her back with my right hand; something I had seen on a youtube video years ago. The grapes came out of her mouth pretty quickly. My little hungry warrior princess tried to shove 5 of them in her tiny mouth at one time, hence the choking. As soon as the grape was out of her mouth, she quickly grabbed another one to eat. I looked at her in disbelief. Did she even realize what almost happened?
I snatched up the remaining grapes and proceeded to chop them into quarters before returning them to her; emphasizing to her to eat one at a time. She continued finishing off the grapes as if nothing happened. What is wrong with her!?!? (lol)
I went back to the sink, my heart pounding, and continued to wash the dishes. My hands were shaking and my brain was on fire. The thoughts that were rushing through my head in the short moments after everything had happened were not pleasant. What if she had died? What would that feel like? How could I ever survive without her? Her father would never forgive me. If she died, I might as well be dead myself.
I kept playing out different scenarios of rushing her to my car, calling an ambulance, giving her CPR. My imagination was on overdrive, and not in a good way. All of this, from her choking to me having these crazy thoughts, literally happened within a 3 minute timespan. It's interesting how fast the mind works. And after that 3 minutes, I just began to cry. I looked over at my daughter, enjoying her little fruits, and just silently cried. She looked over at me, smiling, holding up one of her grapes and said loudly "Mommy! The grape was stuck in my mouth!" She was just glowing with pride over it. Pushing back my tears, I kind of just laughed and said "That's right sweetie. That's why we have to eat one at a time! No more grapes being stuck in the mouth please!"
And that was that. That was the end of my daughter's "near death experience." Of course I am probably overreacting. But it was scary, and I have been super on guard since then. It's also just impacted me in a huge way. You never think of children passing away because we often relate death to age, and of course young children never die. But the reality is, as we all know in our subconscious, that death can happen at any time, any where, for any reason. This incident really helped me realize that. There's not much else I can do with that information besides continuing to love and spend time with my daughter as much as humanly possible. There's part of me that wants to constantly smother her and protect everything she touches or things that go near her. But the truth of it all is that I can't control anything, and I certainly don't want to wrap her up in such a tight cocoon that she doesn't get to experience life; even if that means the more negative aspects of it. However, this was an incredible profound parenting experience that I just thought I should share.
Thanks for reading. :-)
