Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Immune

Ruby had her first set of immunization shots yesterday.

I had some pretty bad anxiety about it. I hate it when she cries. I hate it when she's sad. I didn't want her to feel pain and look at me and think I was the cause of it. I was afraid she'd be inconsolable. I was pretty sure I was going to break down and cry when it all went down.

Sitting in the waiting room at the health office, I could hear horrific baby screams periodically coming from behind different closed doors. I saw mom's carrying their babies out from those torture chambers and the babies faces were all red and wet and they looked bewildered and they were either whimpering or still crying.

When the nurse came out and called for Ruby I felt my heart speed up.

Ruby was sleeping when we got there and she stayed asleep when I undressed her chubby little thighs. The nurse warned me that she would cry - and cry harder with each needle (there were 3 in total). That bitch made me hold her leg out while she jabbed her with 3 different needles that I was pretty sure were going to skewer her legs.

Ruby woke up - looked at the nurse and said, "Lady, is that all you've got? Pfft! Please! Don't waste my time with this shit!", and then went back to sleep.

Seriously.

Ok, maybe she didn't say those words exactly - but she did wake up for the first needle, cry out, fall back asleep. Wake up for second and third needle, cry a little louder - and then fall right back to sleep. Slept for the 15 minutes we had to stay in the waiting room afterwards. Slept all the way home. Continued to sleep when we got home.

When she woke up about an hour later and fussed a little, I thought that I was going to be in for trouble then. But no, Ruby just wanted to lay on the floor and watch Ellen and giggle - she heard the Jonas Brothers were going to be on and she wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Here's proof of a happy Ruby after her needles:


5 comments:

Somewhat Ordinary said...

Baby M has never done more than grunt when he gets shots. She'll be a tough cookie! I'm just hoping it doesn't mean he'll be one of those kids that doesn't feel pain - could mean lots of emergency room trips.

HereWeGoAJen said...

Awesome! Elizabeth did almost the same thing at hers. She calmed down really fast and it made me feel so much better.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure whether it is better or worse, but our nurse gives up to 4 shots at the same time...two in each hand. It is over quicker.

The_EmilyB said...

She's a tough little lady that Ruby! What a relief for you though!

Julia said...

What a tough chic and cute too!

I bet that gave the nurse something to talk about.