Grace and Lab Work

I mentioned before that Grace turned 3 at the beginning of September. This girl has personality oozing out her eyeballs. An independent firecracker that wants to do things "All herself." Buckling her carseat, going to the bathroom, putting her clothes and shoes on. She digs the little responsibilities. It's hard for me sometimes to let go of things sometimes but she more than steps up to the plate. She is polite as all get out, throwing "please" and "thank-you" out there without prompting. She gets ecstatic over little things (like seeing pumpkins) and with the same passion and flair, gets upset about little things too (like when I forget to put a bow in her hair during nap-time). And, boy oh boy, can this girl talk your ear right off. Her stories are a combination of things she remembers and plot lines from shows that she has watched. Her subjects and story lines bounce around all over the place, but they make sense to her and she expresses herself in such a way that even if I don't know what is going on, I'm totally buying it.

I love this girl. She has more energy sometimes than I have patience, but we work it out. I can't get enough of her cheek kisses, and song singing, and her "Mmm Mom this is delicious!" phrases. She knows all of the words to her favorite song John Denver's "For Baby" and sings it to Christian when he starts to cry. I melt into a puddle every time I see her sing to him. 

She recently has fallen in love with the concept of going to the Doctor. Toward the end of my pregnancy, when I was having weekly appointments, she loved coming to the Doctor's office with me. She really liked my doctor and it was then when she change her mind from "Doctors are scary" to "Doctors are fun." When she gets a little bump or scratch she says, "I need to go to the doctor to check it."

That is, until her 3 year old well check up.

After a pretty standard appointment, I talked to my doctor about a few things and then she (my doctor) requested that I take Grace to get some lab work done. I packed up out little crew and we headed to the lab. I prepped myself, knowing that this wasn't going to be a positive experience for Grace. After a brief wait we were taken into the back. Grace wasn't phased by anything. She had never been in a lab before, this was all new territory, new scenes to behold. My nerves were all over the place.

We finally got situated in the chair. I sat down holding Grace on my lap with my arms across her chest. They rubber banded her arm and made the first poke. To my complete shock, Grace barely reacted to it. She pulled her arm back a bit, and calmly said, "Ow, that hurts me." She watched curiously and I sat there completely dumbfounded. Had they gotten the vein and vials of blood needed, it would have been the least traumatic lab experience ever. But, it didn't work out that way. When Grace barely flinched after the initial prick of the needle, the nurse lost the vein. So she went fishing for it. The mere thought makes my skin crawl. She was moving the needle around in Grace's arm and Grace started to say "Ow, ow, ow!" Each "Ow" getting louder and higher until Grace realized that she wanted nothing to do with this process and she started to fight and scream. Thankfully they were able to get 3 of the 5 vials of blood but they still needed 2 more. The nurse looked up at me and said, "We need to switch arms."

I calmly thought to myself, "Okay, we can get through this one more time and then we will be done." I calmly talked to Grace who was more than opposed to having the needle stuck in her other arm, "No Mommy, I don't want it. It hurts me." The nurse directed me to hold her a certain way and to hold tighter. I did my best to follow her instructions and hold Grace's arm as still as possible. Round two was another complete failure. The nurse missed the vein as Grace wiggled and writhed and screamed and cried. And then the nurse fished for the vein for a few minutes. Grace was starting to become hysterical.  Now the nurses (there were two now) wanted to go back to the original arm and try again. We only needed two vials. Round three was the same. Missed vein, minutes worth of fishing the needle around. The composed wall I had built up was starting to crack. Grace had screamed and cried so hard she was doing the shaking gasps that come after crying hard. "No...Mommy...I...don't want... to... do it....again." I took her to the bathroom and reminded her of all the promises I had made, "If you continue to be brave we'll get ice cream and Mickey Donalds and watch a show." At that point I was willing to giver her anything for what she was going through. When I started to walk her back to the chair, for the forth round of needle-fest 2012, she wouldn't go near it and pushed against my legs. We eventually got back into the chair. I wrapped both of my legs around her legs, wrapped my arms tightly around her arms and chest and other arm, and I clamped my chin down on her shoulder.

Round 4 was the worst. She screamed blood curdling screams and fought my grip so hard she was dripping sweat. My arms were shaking from trying to hold her down, and then I broke. Warm tears flowed freely down my cheeks and soaked Grace's shoulder. Her cries and screams were too much for me to handle. I was breaking down, wanting nothing more than to run like heck and hug, love, and pamper Grace until she healed mentally, emotionally, and physically, from this awful awful experience. But I sat there and held her down and cried and groaned as my muscles started to give from the fight my tiny three year old was putting up. Then finally finally, they got those two stupid vials of blood and we could go. 30 minutes after the original poke. 4 pokes total, 4 times fishing for the vein. We walked out into the waiting room tear stained and completely drained and the few children in the waiting room looked at us in horror.

I spent the rest of the day at Grace's beck and call. Whatever she wanted she got. Ice cream-check. Mickey Donalds-check. Shows-check. My Mama bear instincts were fierce and my baby needed time to heal- or maybe I needed time to heal. Whatever it was I cleared our day from anything that wasn't comforting for my girl and I would bite off the head of anything that tried to change that.

 You can just see the sweat on her forehead and the weary look in her eyes. It kills me.

And just like that, lab work will never go smoothly again.