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Monday, October 11, 2010

Day 18 – Hey Little Buddy! How Did You Get Up in There!?

When you become a mom you soon realize that you will have to deal with some pretty gruesome situations. For example: the humungous flutter-blasts (the poops that explodes out the top of the diaper and splatters all over the babies back); or, the throw-up all over you, the bed and the baby. These are the nasty situations that only you as a mom can handle (must be an X chromosome thing) because fathers love to suddenly become inflicted with a case of dry-heaving.

But, the nasty situation that I had to deal with this week is where I draw a line in the sand.

On Wednesday, Jake woke up in a fit. He was howling that his bum hurt. I automatically thought: 1) he had a small rash; 2) he had to go to the potty. When he confirmed that it was not in fact a number 2, I grabbed my flash light to look for a rash. Well, I can also confirm that there was no rash. But, I did find something. There looking right back at me was a little white worm! A WORM! I tried not to panic, I held back a little scream, and not to mention the dry heaving. I did not want to alarm the toddler. I carefully pulled up his pull-up on and told him to go back to bed.

After a restless and reluctant night sleep in the bed with Jake and his new little friend, I immediately called our paediatrician. Even though Jake insisted that his booboo bum was all gone,” that little pain in the butt needed to be evicted immediately!

We went to the paediatrician and he did confirm that what I saw was indeed a worm. Yuck! Apparently these little white critters (officially called pinworms) only come out at night. Children usually get them from sandboxes and play areas at school or in the park. They swallow an egg and a mature worm emerges out the other end. They lay there eggs at night and that’s what causes irritation and scratchiness.

Despite the fact that worms are totally gross, the good news is that these little bum buddies are for the most part harmless, common and pretty easy to treat. You don’t even need to go to your paediatrician. You can get Combatrin over the counter. It’s a one dose medication that exterminates the worms completely.

The best precaution, however, is to make sure that your kids wash their hands after they go to washroom and before they eat. But, since you can’t always control what your children put in their mouths, I suggest a routine flashlight inspection of the tushie. You may be surprised to find that your child has a little night buddy too!

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