Becca's Dream

One day as I entered the step down unit the nurse ran up and stopped me. We have to talk to you before you go into her room.  We are so sorry!  We don’t want you to be upset but we had to restrain Rebecca.  At that point I was envisioning  miniature straight jackets and wondering how much trouble can an infant be?

Seems my two month old was both ripping her IV’s out and taking and smashing her arm against things until the IV infiltrated. As you already know we did not have many vein options left. I was in agreement that  existing sites had to be maintained. I knew how much suffering she endured each time we had to replace and IV.

So I entered the room expecting some horrible strapping system. What greeted my eyes has kept me laughing for years. The restraints that had elicited such apologies were nothing more than two brand new handy wipes and four safety pins. Around each arm was a soft pink wipe pinned together at the wrist with the other end of the wipe pinned to the sheet.  While the arm with the IV had little room to move to prevent her from infiltrating the IV the other arm had enough freedom for her to still suck her thumb but not enough to reach the IV and yank it out.

Accessibility to that thumb was important for Becca.  She sucked those thumbs in the womb.  So much so, that both thumbs had calluses when she was born. One day while I was having a sonogram the tech asked me “can you feel that?”  I told her I could. She said look at this and turned the monitor around. There was Becca plain as day with that thumb in her mouth. We could see her whole hand and head jerking with the aggressive nature with which she attacked her thumb.   Now that I knew what that feeling was I can tell you Becca’s thumbs were seldom out of her mouth.  Becca’s thumbs are actually disproportionately long compared with the rest of her hands because of the years of constant suction they were under; not to mention usually wrinkled like prunes.