Not a great afternoon...

Today Elizabeth had to have blood drawn for some diagnostic and routine blood tests. Now, she has already been through two vaccines and one TB test needle and came through those relatively unscathed. I had worried needlessly about those doctor visits and it turned out she was a trooper. A few tears were quickly erased by a teething biscuit.

I had a feeling today would be more difficult owing to the fact that drawing blood takes more time than a simple vaccine. And difficult it was.

Poor baby Elizabeth. We walked into the lab office and the look on the technicians faces when they realized that little Elizabeth was the patient sort of tipped us off that we could be in for a rough time. "Oh, she is the patient?" one of the technicians said as she eyed her colleague and they each looked as if they wanted to run for the hills. Oh ,well, "we'll have to take her to the back room," she said. Back room as in "far away so no one will hear her wailing". And wail she did.

It was really just about as awful as I might have imagined. First they sat Elizabeth on the examining table and asked me to place her in a suppine position. Elizabeth saw these two women coming at her with needles and tourniquets and you could see it in her face, she was thinking, "I am in for it!". She then proceeded to wail and scream like I had never seen her wail before.

The really scary part was that I got the sense that these two women technicians really didn't have a good sense of how to proceed. They were a little too tentative for my liking. They spent a lot of time looking at her arm and examining the veins and then looking at one another, almost as if to say, "gee, this looks tricky". All the while Elizabeth was screaming. I did not have a good feeling. It seems to be when you are dealing with children--you want to work fast!

Finally they started the procedures--with Elizabeth now in a true state of hysteria. And after about 5 minutes of doing who knows what trying to find a vein, they finally got the needle in and began taking one of the 4 vials needed. Meanwhile I was charged with with holding Elizabeth's legs down. This was bordering on torture for me. Then the techies hit a glitch --Elizabeth must have moved and suddenly there was blood pouring out of her arm and none going in the last vial. Nice. Very nice.

At this point I started thinking, "get us out of here". This was a busy lab but it seemed to me that they specialized in adult patients. I thought, "heck let's take her to the lab at Children's Hospital of Orange County--surely they know how to take blood from a baby there."

The technician left to find out if the 3rd vial had enough in it and returned to say that her boss said it wouldn't be enough. So, she needed to go through this ordeal once again.

"Not today", I said. I couldn't bare to see her cry anymore. Then the boss came in and said he could easily draw the blood. Nice. Really nice. Where the heck was he when Elizabeth was hyperventilating on the table.

And so we said, "okay" knowing that it would probably be worse if we had to go through this the next day--and she needed to have these tests done. So boss man was right. I left the room since I couldn't bear to watch anymore and Marty stayed with her. The good news is that Boss man seemed to know how to find the vein and get the blood. It did however still take a couple of minutes and I stood outside the office and had to hear Elizabeth crying madly.

It was harder than I ever would have thought to hear Elizabeth so terribly scared. I realized at that moment how lucky we had been up until then. Except for my incident with Elizabeth crying in her car seat --we have really not had to hear her cry for more than 3 or 4 minutes since we have had her. And it is a good thing since I don't think my heart can take it.

For a moment while I was standing outside the door I thought, "oh no, this could ruin Elizabeth's happy personality." I feared that we were traumatizing Elizabeth for life. I feared that she would turn into a scared and timid little baby. I feared that she wouldn't trust us anymore. I started to really panic.

Then Elizabeth emerged. Her littles eyes were red and almost swollen shut. She was holding on to Marty and still hyperventilating. I was sick seeing her like this. And then, not expecting a reaction, I offered her an Arrowroot baby biscuit and she opened her little mouth an her frown started to turn to a smile and she grabbed that little biscuit and started chewing.

That was one of those "magical moments" for me. I knew she was gonna be alright. Once we left the office she reached for her bottle and gave us a smile. On the ride home she was laughing. And once we got home she had the most wonderful time in her "exersaucer". In fact, she was almost giddy with excitement.

Elizabeth amazes me with her obvious resilance. Perhaps this is a quality that all babies possess. I don't know.

There are so many amazing things about this little girl. And so many things that she is helping me to realize. I could go on...but I have talked enough tonight. I will follow up on some of these things later.

Sleep tight baby Elizabeth. We love you so.