Calling Poison Control

This pair of posts over at On Considering Inconveniences and The Ohoopee Letter News got me to thinking about our own experiences with the wonderful folks over at Poison Control (1-800-222-1222). I have, to date, made all of two calls to Poison Control. Here's how they broke down:

Timothy: none.

Stephen: two. Yep, all Stephen.

Jonah: surprisingly, none. He's never really been big for putting things in his mouth, for which we are all thankful.

Sam: none. By the time you get to boy #4, Poison Control starts to call you.

The first time, I was home alone with Stephen. I have no idea why, but there we were, daddy and Baby (which was his nickname at the time; Timothy was Brother). Nothing much was going on, until I walked into the bathroom to find Stephen with toothpaste all over his mouth. He had eaten about half of the tube.

Remembering my chemistry (fluorine = bad), I called poison control. They had me read off the active ingredients and then they told me that it wouldn't be too bad, but not to let him do it again. I said okay, hung up, and fed him a lot of crackers. There do not appear to have been any consequences, and when Sam something similar recently, I just went directly to the crackers.

The second time was directly my fault. I misread the label on a cough medicine and gave Stephen 1.25 teaspoons instead of 0.25. That's a lot. I panicked and called PC again. They were very nice, asked for the active ingredients again (I sense a pattern). They said he would probably be very excited for a short time and then be very drowsy (as in, hard to wake up) for the rest of the night. He may skip the excited part, and he would be fine the next morning. He did, and he was.