My son is 13 months and has his first heavy duty illness. He’s newly in nursery, and I work in a nursery, so am well aware what lies ahead and this is the first of many.
He has the standard slightly high temp, hoarseness yesterday replaced with streaming nose today, cough, slightly off food but drinking milk. Had a rough night last night where he did a huge cough after milk and brought it back up. Outside of that he’s ok. Nothing concerning at all.
But I am terrified that he’s swallowed a button battery. To be clear, this is not based in me actually thinking he could have. I cleared the house out months ago and made sure there were none in his reach as soon as he was mobile, and any toys that have them are on a high shelf for supervised use only. All present and accounted for. We actually don’t have any in the house as far as I’m aware.
Nursery don’t generally use toys that require batteries. He went on a nursery trip at the start of the week but they’re highly supervised.
But my brain has made the connection between - not always having eyes on him 24/7 (as much as nursery may try to, there are times you just can’t be watching every child at the same time) to this illness and filled in the blank. The worst part for me is that the symptoms for button batteries are the same as childhood illnesses, and if I was to take him to hospital and they asked if I suspected he’d swallowed one, my honest answer would be no. If I thought it a was a genuine risk he’d already be in hospital. I can’t ask for a chest X-ray every time he has a common illness.
I used to have health anxiety and thought I’d got on top of it, but think this is a flare up. I had a highly anxious and irrational mum and didn’t want to be that way but I can feel it happening with this. Does anyone have any advice/rationality to share? My husband just thinks I’m mildly insane.
If you managed to read all of this, thank you! And hope you have a good Saturday!