Little kids are hard to manage, to say the least.
I was no exception. As a toddler, my parents once had to take me to the emergency room because I shoved a cracker so far up my nose that it wouldn’t come out.
At least my parents knew what the problem was. That made life for the doctors much easier.
One mother from Essex in the United Kingdom wasn’t as lucky. According to The Sun, Becky Stiles was changing the diaper of her 10-month-old son, Harvey, earlier this month when she noticed a dark circle on the roof of his mouth.
“I tried to touch it, but he just screamed at me, so I made his dad rush over and see it,” Becky, 24, told the outlet. “I’m shaking, sweating and holding back the tears. We put a [flashlight] on it, and his dad said, ‘What the hell is that?’”
Stiles then called her mother, who suggested she call 111 for medical assistance, The Sun reported.
Stiles then said she and the baby’s father “dropped the two oldest kids off to their grandparents and made the 30-minute drive to our closest A&E hospital.”
It was then that a nurse looked at the problem and revealed the truth.
“One nurse said, ‘Let me just get my pen torch and have a look.’ After about 30 seconds of looking, she said, ‘That’s a sticker.’ Me being an idiot, (I) told her, ‘No, look — that’s a hole,'” Stiles explained.
“She put her finger in his mouth and hooked it out. I laughed, was shaking and so embarrassed,” Stiles continued.
While it’s natural that someone would feel embarrassed at heading to the emergency room for something silly, Stiles did the right thing.
Parents always should be hyper-aware of a baby’s health, and one wouldn’t normally think of a sticker when they see a “hole” in their baby’s mouth. A cleft palate comes to mind, though those usually are diagnosable immediately after birth.
At least Stiles was able to take the situation in stride.
“In the car, I had to swallow my pride even more and make all the phone calls again to let everyone know Harvey didn’t in fact have a hole in his mouth,” she told The Sun. “He had taken a liking to stickers.”
I was surprised at the general brutality of the limited Twitter reaction. One commenter thought the whole thing might’ve been faked, while another expressed concern at Stiles’ plastic fingernails going into her baby’s mouth.
How did the sticker get there? Was it purposely fixed to scare the mom? Or did the mom know but wanted to create a drama and be in the news globally?
— Amit Bhattacharjie (@bhattacharjie) May 14, 2021
Baby rushed to A&E with ‘hole’ in mouth but mum left red-faced after diagnosis https://t.co/72bukIeI7y. Good she didn’t try take it out she could have put a hole in his mouth with those stupid nails
— nora mccormack(Edwards) (@nmccormack1) May 13, 2021
I think this is a case of people being busybodies more than anything else. I know from experience that people, especially parents, sometimes can overreact to a health crisis. Fortunately, at the end of the day, everybody turned out OK.
Now to keep the little one away from those delicious stickers …
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
