Where I fall down…

August 1st, 2008

I like taking care of Robin, but my personal problems are making his mobile baby-hood more dangerous than it really should be.

For example, I’m profoundly unaware of my physical space. I routinely get bruises on my arms and legs because I bump into doors and tables and so forth. Sometimes, my arms are holding a baby.

And, as everybody knows, I’m incredibly distractible and not always… aware enough of my surroundings to think through consequences. For example, a Kids ‘N Pets bottle was left on the floor. Empty, it turns out, except for maybe a few drops. Kids N’ Pets is an enzymatic odor-removing cleaner than has, among its ingredients, isopropyl alcohol. So, I hear a bottle-shaking noise. I look over. Now, right now, I don’t actually recall what I saw, because the adrenalin made me react before I’d fully processed the information. I know Robin had the bottle in his hand. I don’t think he was chugging it. I separated them very quickly. I picked Robin up and he snuggled up to me, sleepy. I inspected the bottle. The first thing I saw on the label was ‘keep out of reach of children’. The second thing was ‘Non-toxic’. It didn’t have any ingestion warnings. I couldn’t smell the distinctive odor on Robin’s breath. It seemed empty– but I’d heard liquid being shaken around a moment ago.

I made Robin a bottle, reasoning that if he wasn’t in any kind of discomfort, dilution couldn’t hurt, and he almost immediately fell asleep. I poked around at the web for a couple of minutes, decided that given the nature of isopropyl alcohol, I wasn’t reassured by his calm sleep, and called Poison Control. I figured asking how much was dangerous and what I should do was a good idea even if it was unlikely he’d had any of what didn’t seem to be a very dangerous substance.

The nice lady looked it up. 10% isopropyl alcohol, and that’s the most dangerous ingredient. He’d have to drink a quarter cup or more to get sick. And feeding him was in fact the right thing to do.

Whee. I feel wrung out.

(And here’s a lesson in why memory is unreliable, because as I calm down, I remember instead that he was crawling away and the bottle was tipped over on the floor. I looked at it and saw how similar in shape it was to the water bottle Robin now drinks from regularly. I recalled the splashing noise and my own inattention and I freaked out. He couldn’t have held that big bottle in one hand. Maybe two? Was he holding it and shaking it? Or did I build that image myself? I can’t rely on my own memory, so I have to go by his own past behavior. Pick up bottle. Shake it. Stick nozzle in mouth to see if he can to the bite-and-suck he does for the water bottle. He wouldn’t be able to, and it would taste bad. Shake more for fun noise. Discard. Man. I never even considered the danger of letting him teach himself to drink from those water bottles. I’m glad this was such a harmless lesson…)

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