Emergency room

Finding Sweetness in the Bitter

On Sunday afternoon, Sadie came to me and said her earring felt too tight. I looked, and the back of her ear had dried blood on it. I asked Jimmy to have a look and he said “Oh, it looks like the backing of your earring fell off.” I knew there was no way her earring would stay in without the backing, so I prodded at it a little and saw the the back was completely inside her ear lobe. Ugh.

She was really hesitant to let us touch her ear because it was tender. We both tried, but had no luck getting the back of her earring out of her ear. It was stuck. We had church that night, and I asked Sadie if my sister could look at it. Sadie adores her aunt Hannah and really trusts her, so we had Hannah have a look.

Hannah also tried to poke around and at this point, Sadie’s earring back started to come out of the front of her ear and was bleeding. We abandoned the mission and I called Sadie’s doctor on our way home from church. They advised going to the ER to have the backing removed ASAP to avoid infection. (more…)

Never A Dull Moment Around Here

Well, as I mentioned in a recent post, we had a weird situation with Mordecai’s circumcision. I’m back to share the story and report that it got even more crazy. There’s never a dull moment around here, so let me explain!

Because we had Mordecai at a freestanding birth center instead of a hospital, we knew he couldn’t be circumcised at the birth center. The midwives just don’t do circumcisions and we were home a few hours after his birth.

Usually, the birth center schedules the circumcision for a couple of days after birth with a doctor who works with them. Wellllll, a couple of weeks before his birth, we got an email that the doctor that performs the circumcisions for the birth center couldn’t perform the procedure due to supply chain issues with circumcision kits.

So, we were told that we had two options:

  1. Have the circumcision done at the hospital by a urologist when Mordecai is over six months old, but he has to be put under anesthesia and it’s a tougher recovery the older the patient is.
  2. Have a Mohel, which is a Jewish Rabbi that performs circumcisions, do the procedure in our home on the eighth day of Mordecai’s life.

So, that was kind of unexpected! I personally was like well, maybe this is a sign we shouldn’t go through with it? Jimmy was pretty firm on having it done, and I read about the risks of urinary tract infections in boys/men who aren’t circumcised. It was just a weird situation, you know?

On top of that, our insurance wouldn’t cover it because it wasn’t done by the birth center’s doctor, so it was considered “out of network.” We ended up having to pay $400 out-of-pocket for something that is usually covered by insurance no problem.

We took everything into consideration and decided to go with the mohel. The rabbi actually thought we were Jewish when we told him Mordecai’s name, lol. Anyway, he came to our house on the eighth day or Mordecai’s life and did the circumcision.

Newborn baby laying in bassinet

Our little guy resting after his circumcision

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