Bead

There’s nothing like a three-year-old sticking a bead up her nose at dinner time and a subsequent whanau trip – minus the hubby who’s away on a dive course for several days - into A & E. 

Missy came out of her room looking guilty as sin and slightly upset as she informed me in a tiny voice there was a ball up her nose.

She was quite happy, if not a little anxious from my reaction as I piled them into the car and drove to the hospital.

I knew this was fairly common practice for infants - her older brother had done it the year before with a small object. It was most out of character but he was in the naughty corner at the time. A friend’s boy had also posted a corn kernel in his twin brother’s ear some month’s ago.

There would be a wait of up to two hours, we were informed upon arrival. The boys lasted half an hour playing with the abacus in the waiting room before they began displaying signs of becoming painful.

Luckily I’d rung the grandparents who swung by on their way out to dinner, scooped up my two ruffian barefoot children and took them out with them. 

The doctor explained that when children have foreign bodies up their noses, around 65 per cent of the time, the “Mother’s Kiss”* will extract it. This is when, blocking the clear nostril, air is blown into the mouth and the object should pop out like a champagne cork. However, several attempts at this were unsuccessful because the air was simply blowing through the hole in the centre of the bead.

Jayla was not having a bar of the doctor coming at her with the narrow, sharp instrument he was holding so, after some umming and ahhing on his part, it was decided to take her home for the night and return at 8am when she would be sedated.

The idea of her sleeping all night with a bead up her nose was unsettling.

“Honestly, I don’t mind pinning her arms down while you remove it,” I said. After-all, it worked with her brother.

But the doctor said it was not their practice to frighten children so, after reassurance that the bead would not be going anywhere, we returned home three hours later.

Obviously I didn’t sleep much. But apart from the whistling sound coming from her room with every exhale, she was fine.

Next morning we arrived - Jayla reluctantly - bang on eight and, this time, saw an ear, nose and throat doctor who said he would have no trouble extracting it without sedation.

He showed us into a room where a solemn young man sat on a bed wearing a monstrous eye patch. Upon sighting this, Jayla backed away in fright - she thought he was a pirate!

She wasn’t letting this doctor near her either so he took us up to another ward. Kicking and screaming, she was swaddled in a sheet and pinned down by two nurses while I held her head and the object was removed in one swift motion by the doctor.

“I told you it wouldn’t hurt,” she had the cheek to say to me as we walked back to the car post-performance.

It’s baffling to us adults why children poke objects in these orifices but I don’t think there’ll be a repeat of it in our family – both Jayla and Cade have learnt their lessons and Jai, having witnessed the drama, certainly won’t be trying it.

Oh and as for the bead? It was purple, for the record, and now takes pride of place taped to a page in her baby book.

* It is recommended the “Mother’s Kiss” be performed under supervision of a medical professional.

Ten things children commonly put in their noses (in no particular order):

1. Crayons
2. Beads
3. French fries
4. Fingers
5. Raisons
6. Spaghetti
7. Tissue
8. Flower petals
9. Small toys – marbles, lego

10. Beans and peas