The Case of the Missing Mum-Mum

We are slowly introducing Toby to his usual foods.  Its harder to do the second time around because a part of me will always believe that the Right middle lobe pneumonia was due to aspiration pneumonia.  For now its just my irrational medical brain speaking - -I'm hoping Toby's wellness will prove me wrong.  And I'm hoping that by me writing it in my blog it won't come true.  But  every time he coughs or sounds congested, that little voice resurfaces and tells me that he's still got something stuck in his lungs.

Its like when you're watching a movie and you see a random scene or flashback and you think, "Subtle foreshadowing..."  Well, if anyone (for some odd reason) made a movie of my life, the one and ONLY exam question that I would remember from medical school would be the Unit 1 CRE when there was a little kid with recurrent pneumonia and the answer was....OBVIOUSLY..the he had aspirated a peanut. Needless to say, I got the question wrong.  Which is probably why it always crosses my mind when  a kid is repeatedly sick or, in this instance, when Toby gets this ridiculously DRAMATIC reaction to RSV and has a radiographically evident right middle lobe pneumonia after weeks of choking on foods in his eager-I-have-ONE-tooth-so-give-me-the-good-stuff ways.

Anyway -- I digress.  Toby does cough now and then, but in general he's doing well.  And we've slowly introduced the foods he used to eat back into his diet.  We know he's not allergic, but we figured we'd wait a bit to introduce "chewing" foods back into his diet.  He was such a cowboy with ONE tooth -- I'm a little afraid of what he's going ot convince us he can take on now that he has THREE teeth.  Yesterday, my mom came up as a last minute request as both Rob and myself found ourselves needed at work, and when we got home Toby was happily eating a mum-mum.  (A baby cracker that is chemically designed to dissolve and be choking-friendly...TOTALLY organic...)  He was gloatingly-not choking on it -- so we avoided the inevitable introduction.

This morning we gave him another mum-mum seeing as he'd had one yesterday.  Unfortunately, it was the last two in the package and they were in pieces so we just dumped the whole thing on his highchair table and let him feed himself.  THe little monster grabbed 2 GIANT pieces and proceeded to stuff his face with them, alternating his little hands in and eating frenzy.  (This is 20 min after he'd finished his lunch, by the way- - he wasn't hungry.  He just loves to eat.)

Being the newly-anxious-parents that we have become, we thought it wise to advise our son to finish chewing what he had in his mouth BEFORE shoving his other hand's mum-mum into it.  This didn't go over so well.  He COMPLETELY disagreed with us and vocalized it.  So we took BOTH of his beloved mum-mums out of his hands and made him wait until he was finished chewing his mum-mum filled mouth.  Again -- disagreement.  So we removed ALL the little mum mum bits from the highchair table and reassured him that WE were in control and we did not want him shoving ANY more mum mums into his mouth until he was FINISHED with his first mouthful.

As we looked at each other in contented agreement, the little bugger - -mouth STILL full to the brim with  mum-mum bits- - slowly gave us a devilish grin as he reached down into his high chair and produced a HUGE piece of mum-mum and, with a flourish, THREW it into his mouth before we could protest.   Apparently he had one hiding under his legs.

The end of the story goes like this - -Toby finished every little last bit of his broken mum-mums and we topped it off with his first real piece of banana.  He didn't choke on a thing and is now officially well on his way to resuming both his monster-ish-ways AND his real food eating abilities.  There's no stopping our little guy!