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Kids & Emergencies - Preparing for the unexpected {Episode 34}
97 Plays5 years ago
We hope emergencies never happen, but we urge you to be prepared just in case. Bonnie & Audrey discuss water safety, fire safety, local weather emergencies, seizures, and the contents of their first aid kits.
Mentioned in this episode:
A Girl and A Glue Gun on Instagram
Audrey's First Aid Kit contains:
arnica montana gel and homeopathic pills
ankle brace, elbow brace, wrist brace
tobacco for bee stings
Bonnie's 1st aid kit contains:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Joyful Chaos in Motherhood
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. And we're homeschooling moms to a combined total of 18 children. We know firsthand that motherhood is full of crazy chaos and overwhelming obligations, but it should also be full of love and laughter. Regardless of where you are on your journey, come join us as we work together to find joy in the chaos of motherhood.
Handling Emergencies with Kids
00:00:34
Speaker
Today we're going to talk about kids and the emergencies that come with kids. So how to handle a whole bunch of different situations and also we're going to share things that we have in our first aid kit. So we're going to start you off with a review.
00:00:51
Speaker
Yeah, the one I have for you today was left by KBP209 and is titled Binge, Binge, Binge. I have never... I love that title. I have never found a podcast that I actually wanted to binge until this one. I love these fun ladies. As a young mom of three little boys with plans to have more, I feel so inspired by their stories and wonderful insights to real mom life. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with the world, Audrey and Bonnie.
00:01:14
Speaker
Oh, that's so sweet. Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you for leaving a review. We appreciate every review left. It helps other people find us and get to listen also. Yeah. And gives us a little bit of credibility so they don't think we're just too crazy people talking to the air. Which we kind of are.
Creative First Aid Tips and Personal Stories
00:01:34
Speaker
Okay, we're going to start off with a humor segment. And I have a thing I never thought I'd say. So a little segue into this, I'm going to jump ahead to a first aid kit. One thing that we keep in our first aid kit is, I don't know if you know this or not, but tobacco is really good for bee stings. It will help the swelling go down and the pain go away really fast.
00:01:59
Speaker
We keep in our first aid kit the little snus packages and just band-aid them on when there's a bee sting. Okay, just slap it right on the skin. Yeah. Oh, cool. And it's amazing how it works. Okay, so you might imagine I'm a little embarrassed in the line at Walmart, you know, the one you have to go to buy the hard products.
00:02:24
Speaker
And I'm a little embarrassed to be in that line, but I'm there buying something for my first aid kit for my kid's bee stings because we have honey bees and the kids get stings. So I'm sort of skulking through this line trying to make my six foot profile a little less six footish.
00:02:43
Speaker
And I get up to the register and I need one of those packages over there of that stuff. And she's OK. She turns around and grabs it. And I say, it's not for me. It's for my kid.
00:03:04
Speaker
Mother of the year, right there. I don't choose a step. It's for my kid, okay? Oh, dear. That's awesome. Yeah, so then she gave me a look and she had to give me the lecture, but not allowing to sell it to me for, you know, all that. And I'm like, oh my goodness, what did I just say? You almost got yourself in trouble. It's like, well, how old is your child? Because if you're not 18, that's awesome. You're an enabler, I tell you.
00:03:31
Speaker
Yeah. I've also heard that tobacco is good for bruises. Have you ever heard of that? No. We need to do some more research into that. But yeah, interesting, interesting stuff. I really feel like everything's given to us for a reason, you know? Yeah. And it's usually not chewing it on the back of the, you know, behind the bleachers. Well, be sure not to tell them that you need it for your kid when you're buying it. Yeah, we'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do it. OK.
00:03:55
Speaker
Okay, so we're going to start today's episode off with a disclaimer. So Bonnie and I have lots of things that we do to help our kids when they're having an emergency. Because if we took all nine kids, each of the nine kids to the emergency room every time that there was something wrong, we'd live there, right?
00:04:18
Speaker
Right. Or they'd name it after us for all the amount of money we spent or something. So, but the disclaimer is if your kid needs help, take them and get it when they need it. Okay, this is just some stuff that we do and learn to recognize an emergency and deal with it and don't, you know, be safe with your kids. Don't take our word for it.
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of this comes from experience as well because when I was a mom of one or two kids, I took my kids as a doctor for every little thing because I was panicked and inexperienced and it made me nervous to not get it checked out. And that's totally cool. You do whatever your little mom intuition tells you to do. But over the years, Audrey and I have gotten to a point where we're like, oh, that's going to be okay. That's going to heal on its own or we know what to do about that.
00:05:02
Speaker
So we're just here to offer our advice on, hey, have you thought about trying this? Have you thought about trying this? Or be sure to go to the doctor if this or that.
00:05:11
Speaker
We want to start off by saying that one of the number one things we've realized over the years, and I'm sure many of you moms have realized the same thing, is that when a kid gets hurt, they react the way they see you react.
Staying Calm During Kids' Emergencies
00:05:24
Speaker
So this goes for everything from tripping and falling on a sidewalk to severe lacerations. And sometimes it can be a real struggle in self-control to not react how you want to react, which is screaming and freaking out when you see blood, right? Some of us don't as well with blood.
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah. But if mom stays calm, the kid will stay calm, and that can go a long way, especially in a true emergency. The first thing 911 will tell you is to stay calm. And if mom is freaking out, then the whole house falls apart. So that's a tricky thing to do, but highly valuable.
00:05:59
Speaker
Yeah. Now, Bonnie, if I have it right, don't you have some actual training EMT? Like, weren't you going to school for that or something? Yeah. I am trained as an EMT. Well, it's been a long time now. And I worked in a plasma donation center when I was first married.
00:06:17
Speaker
What do they call me like? Whatever the medical higher up was, which is hilarious because EMT training is pretty intense, but it's still just an EMT. And I was the medical authority on campus there, which was a little frightening. But you know, the biggest issues we had there was someone passing out or someone losing a lot of blood or something like that. So it's actually a very interesting story that I'll have to tell you another time. But OK, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, that adds a little credibility to some of the stuff we say then.
00:06:49
Speaker
Okay, so we're going to start off with what's our threshold? When do we take kids to the hospital or for help before we tell you all our home remedies and stuff that we don't react over? What is our threshold?
00:07:01
Speaker
So for us, that's broken bones. Like we can't fix that at home. Yeah. So definitely broken bones are one situation where we seek immediate outside help. Yeah. Although I will tell you that there's not much they can do for broken toes. I've found out. Yeah. Yeah. It just gets... Or nose. Oh yeah. And usually you don't even know when a toe is broken unless you go get an x-ray, but it gets really, really swollen and really, really painful. You'll probably know, but anyway.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah, for us, it's the same excessive amounts of blood or anything really that's serious that I haven't dealt with before. So, like the first time we had a seizure, we took him in because I had no clue what was going on and no clue what to do. So, and that's, I think, a pretty decent rule of thumb. If this is an accident or an emergency that hasn't happened before and you don't know what you're doing, it never hurts to go to urgent care, if possible, or if necessary, the ER.
00:07:52
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. We have really good health insurance with my husband's work. That's not why we do a lot of stuff at home. It's not an affordability thing or anything. In fact, I think that can be said for anybody. Any emergency room that you walk into, they have a must-treat policy, don't they? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep.
00:08:11
Speaker
Okay, so now we're going to share our most recent emergency because as you can probably imagine, there's been a lot of emergencies among these 18 children. Although I do have to say that among our nine, we've only ever had one broken bone, which is pretty incredible. Oh, you know, now that you say that I think we're the same, maybe two, what can I remember? I can't remember now, but at least one.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yeah. So anyway, if you're squeamish, you might want to skip ahead a minute or two because we're going to share our most recent emergency. So this ours is one that we were able to take care of at home. So our
00:08:51
Speaker
five-year-old son was unfortunately bitten in the face by our dog. And we didn't know at the time that our dog was dying of heart disease, so he was pretty crabby. And so he bit our son in the face, and it was a full-on face bite. He had a mark
00:09:12
Speaker
Puncture wound by his eyebrow and on his cheek and on his chin. So his his whole face got Yeah, and he came screaming into the house with huge cuts and lacerations and massive amount of blood running down his poor little face and his little two-year-old sister was standing next to him and also reacting quite
00:09:36
Speaker
loudly. So I flipped him up on the counter by the kitchen sink to get his heart up equal by his head and I washed off the blood to see where the wounds were and then I put immediate pressure on it and I called to get the bleeding stopped. I called my husband because he is
00:10:00
Speaker
invigorated when there's an emergency that he's taken care of. And so he came home and he healed this. He patched up this wound using some wound closure tape strips, and then we used hydrocolloid bandages.
00:10:22
Speaker
this so these wound closure strips are what we used instead of stitches and then the hydrocolloid bandaid to keep it moist and from drying out. And our little boy will have a scar, but I think if we took him to the hospital to treat this, he would have had scars as well. Yeah, you get scars from stitches too, that's true. Yeah.
00:10:44
Speaker
But the cute ending to this story is that once my husband had the five year old all fixed up and he was good to go, then the little two year old, she comes out from behind my skirts and she says, Daddy, I got scared. Can you fix my scared? Oh, that's adorable.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, so he took some extra leftover of those wound closure strips and he made little patches on her face and he fixed her scared, so she wasn't scared anymore. Every time this story gets told, she says, and I got scared, but daddy fixed my scared. Oh, that is the cutest thing I've ever heard. Talk about traumatic, not only for your little boy, but your poor little girl. Oh my goodness, watch her brother get bit and poor dog involved too.
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah, so our recent emergency was a puncture wound. We have a little playhouse. It's actually one of those little plastic, like little tikes playhouse, but it's actually put together with screws. So one of the walls had been knocked off by some kid and there was a screw sticking up from it, which I was not aware of.
00:11:51
Speaker
Metal screw or plastic screw? Metal screw. Oh, like a three-inch one. And so, of course, somebody walked across and stepped right on that screw. And she's screaming bloody murder, and I'm feeding the baby. And I'm like, you're fine. Come on in. Come on in. You're fine. I'll check in here. Little did I know that it was like a serious wound. Sorry. So we brought her in, checked it out. The tricky thing with puncture wounds is that if there's any bacteria on the screw, it can get up inside the tissue where you can't wash it out.
00:12:21
Speaker
So we let it bleed a little bit. We also learned that you're supposed to let it bleed like a lot with a puncture wound because that's basically the body's way of washing it out. We washed out with hydrogen peroxide, but unfortunately the next day she woke up to it red and hot and inflamed, which is usually a sign of infection. Yeah.
00:12:39
Speaker
So we did go into urgent care. It had already healed over. The skin had healed over. So there was really nothing to be done as far as cleaning it out anymore. And the doctor didn't want to reopen it. So we did put her on antibiotics just to be sure because, you know, infection is not really something you want to worry about. But I learned my lesson. Let it bleed more, wash more, especially with the puncture wound. So there you have it. Live and learn. Two. Two. Yeah.
00:13:05
Speaker
It can make your mom heart race, can't it? Yeah, looking at a foot, and she's like, my foot's hot. I'm like, no, no. But yeah, with each little emergency, we learned some more skills. Yeah, yep, adding to our knowledge base.
Water Safety and Preparedness
00:13:21
Speaker
OK, so the first area we're going to cover is water safety. I know you guys have a pool, Bonnie, so you're going to have a lot to add to this. But here in the Midwest, we have a lot of bodies of water. And so it's important to me that my kids do know how to swim. I have put kids in swimming lessons in the past. But with my current batch of little kids that don't know how to swim, I'm actually teaching them how to swim at my sister-in-law's pool. And that's kind of fun and cool.
00:13:48
Speaker
And we don't have any water really close enough that they can wander and fall into. So it's more a matter of, you know, when we go places. But of course.
00:13:57
Speaker
kids knowing how to swim is an important life skill. Um, I also wanted to mention that I have training, um, from my days in early childhood education, I have training in CPR and infant and child CPR. And, and then also I have lifeguard training from back in the days when I was doing swimming lessons, some lifeguard training. So, um, definitely knowing how to save a kid and what to do, you know, if somebody's underwater and all that.
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah. In fact, in the resources, I am going to share an Instagram account with you guys. She's a nurse, a pediatric nurse who shares how to do choking survival skills and CPR on her channel. And it's really awesome to watch. She hasn't saved in her highlights. So everyone should go watch that because if you don't know CPR, you're one step farther from giving your kid help and sometimes in true emergencies, they need it immediately. So especially the water dangers.
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah. And that's CPR and mouth to mouth resuscitation is something you can learn by watching a YouTube video. Right. Yeah, for sure. You don't have to be, I mean, you have to be certified to work as someone who needs, you know, to be around kids or whatever, but you don't need to be certified to be a mom. You just need to know the skills and they're not difficult. Yeah. And I think the confidence that you'll have knowing that you can, you know, hopefully it'll never happen. But if you, you have a confidence knowing how to do it, another skill.
00:15:24
Speaker
That's a good thing to know. Yeah, that's definitely true. The confidence goes a long way in helping you to stay calm in those emergencies, right? Yeah. Yeah. So as far as water safety goes for us, we live in Phoenix and it is
00:15:37
Speaker
definitely a danger here. Just about every other house has a pool, maybe more than that. And a lot of them are unfenced for some reason. I don't get it, but it's actually- I thought that was a lot. It is. It's actually code now when they build a house and or a pool, you have to fence it, but there are lots of houses that we're kind of grandfathered in and have unfenced pools.
00:15:56
Speaker
So, yeah, it's just something that's always in the back of my mind, especially in summertime when you're out and about. And interestingly enough, most people are afraid for their children's safety when no one's in the pool, you know, and there's easy access like a kid could wander in. But the truth of the matter is, it's more dangerous when everyone is in the pool because a kid can quickly slip underwater and go unnoticed.
00:16:19
Speaker
So most of the time if a toddler wanders into the pool, someone's going to notice, right? But if there's 10 or 15 kids, I'll cousin swim party or something, and a kid can't get to the side, he'll go on notice. We've actually had a couple of close calls like this. It's not very fun to talk about, so I won't go into detail. But yeah, it's just really, really important to stay extra vigilant when everyone is swimming.
00:16:41
Speaker
So one thing that I have, a tip I've heard of that I try to implement when we have big group swimming is to have a designated water watcher. So the best way to do this is to give that person like a whistle or something that they actually transfer ownership of to the next person. So like this, say it's me for a half an hour. I'm holding, I'm wearing this whistle and I am only watching. I'm not on my phone. I'm not talking to anybody. I'm not changing a diaper. I'm just watching the pool. And then when my turn is up, I transfer it to somebody else.
00:17:12
Speaker
So that is definitely the safest way, basically a lifeguard, you know, a makeshift lifeguard to make sure that every head is accounted for. We also do swim lessons. And in reality, you can do swim lessons as early as like six to 12 months on a little baby. I know that sounds crazy, but there are survival lessons that you can teach kids just how to roll over and float.
00:17:35
Speaker
So, if they ever do stumble into a body of water, yeah, they know how to flip over and float. My two littlest ones, well, not the baby, but the two-year-old and the four-year-old.
00:17:43
Speaker
The four-year-old was so close to swimming this year, the two-year-old was not. And so we ended up having somebody come to our house. We have a pool in this house and she taught them and probably, it was probably six or seven weeks and they are both amazing swimmers now. So it really doesn't take a lot of time. It takes some money and a little bit of dedication, but it was so rewarding to see them be so much safer around water.
00:18:07
Speaker
Absolutely. I would love to see that. Yeah. Watching the two year old is crazy. We can throw her in the middle of the pool and she bobs her little head up and gets to the side. If she gets tired, she's taught to flip over on her back and breathe for a minute or two and then turn back over and make it. So cool. I think just being around water, kids get more comfortable with it. Yeah, definitely. I think that exposure is as valuable as any lessons really. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker
OK, we're going to move on to fire safety and precautions. And we've thankfully never had a fire or anything to deal with. But we do have a plan in place for what should happen, and especially what should happen at night, like if everybody's sleeping. So there's lots of things that you can teach your kid about fire safety. And we do have, we'll link them in the show notes, but we do have safety ladders because all of our bedrooms are on the second floor. So each bedroom on the second floor has one of these safety ladders that
00:19:00
Speaker
Um, so kids don't have to jump from the second story window. They have these ladders to climb down so we can link those. And then also, um, I wanted to recommend somebody who actually has gone through the whole fire experience and dealt with it. And she has a couple of blog posts that she did about it. And that's a girl in a glue gun, and we will link those in the show notes.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah, in fact, I was just thinking of her when you said safety letters because part of her story is that her son was home, one of her children were home when the fire broke out and he was in the basement in his bedroom and the bedroom obviously had a window with a well.
00:19:38
Speaker
And there were ladders in the well that they'd installed, and he was able to climb out to safety. So imagine the potential disaster had that not been there. So there really should be a safe way out of every single bedroom.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. She does have some really helpful tips on they lost everything and they had to go through and catalog everything afterwards. And because she's a blogger, she had pictures of everything. Yeah. So that's getting easier. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But she just has a lot of recommendations about, you know, just go through your house, take a video and put it in a safe box. Smart. So smart.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, so for us, as far as fire safety goes, I would just say when it comes to the drill of how to get out of your house, just practice a ton with little kids. So we did this in our old house. We actually have yet to do it in this one. We need to do it in this one. But make sure, run through it with kids. Maybe not the jumping out the window part.
00:20:32
Speaker
Kids think it's great fun. Okay, today we're going to practice. Get on the ground, crawl to the hall, you know, just kind of a fun activity to do for a family night. It's important that kids know that smoke is actually the real danger. Yes, of course, fire is dangerous, but usually smoke inhalation takes people much quicker than fire ever would. So it's important for them to realize that if they see smoke, that's when you get out. You don't wait to see fire.
00:20:54
Speaker
And to never, ever, ever go back for anything. Not a sibling, not a dog, not a stuffed animal, nothing, nothing that the firemen, that's their job and you just get yourself to safety, so. Yes, absolutely.
Tornado and Natural Disaster Preparedness
00:21:07
Speaker
Not fun stuff to talk about, but if it ever happens, you'll be so thankful your kids are prepared. Right, right. Better safe than sorry. Yeah.
00:21:15
Speaker
Now, Bonnie and I are each going to share about some localized emergency staff involving weather. So here in the Midwest, we have tornadoes. So we have a tornado drill and plan, and we have a safe place to go in a tornado. We have a basement. And lots of times when a storm is coming through, even if it's just a severe thunderstorm, we'll get the little kids to do the little drill, you know, go down to the basement and all that, because then they're out from underfoot.
00:21:43
Speaker
Um, people do have to make a run for the basement. You don't have, you're not tripping over 17 little kids on the way there. But we have weather watchers. So some of that, my husband is one of the weather watchers, um, just in that keeping an eye on the weather. And even if he's at work, he'll, he'll call us and say, Hey, are you watching? Are you where there's a storm coming in and that kind of thing. And then, um, my teenage son has also picked up that role too, where he'll instead of run into the basement when there's a storm, he'll go outside and he'll watch the clouds and he'll watch for the funnel clouds and all that.
00:22:13
Speaker
Um, so in the basement, we have a sauna in our basement, which is, I mean, it's really cool. We have a sauna down there. So what we do, this is part of, um, talking about your reaction, how you react affects your kids. So all my kids would get, um, freaked out because, you know, the potential of the house blowing down and all that, and they're freaking out and everybody's trying to sit on my lap in the sauna, you know, and everybody, well, dad's not there and upstairs watching.
00:22:41
Speaker
whatever. So instead of having six little kids on my lap in the sauna, when everybody crying, um, I've instituted ice cream in the sauna. So if we have to go to the basement, um, we have a freezer in the basement. We have plastic spoons in the extra food room. And if we're in the basement for tornado, we get ice cream in the sauna in the middle of the day, in the morning, whatever time it is middle of the night. Everybody's like, yeah. So everybody's like tornado. Yes. Ice cream in the sauna.
00:23:09
Speaker
That's really, really fun. So is the sauna then safer because it's like a tight little room? And it's also just like our basement is unfinished and it's all cement. So nothing would happen. Just there's no windows. Nothing would happen in the basement, but it's just kind of a place for them to gather and be together. And yeah, it's just an extra set of walls. Yeah. And then we also have our little, um,
00:23:34
Speaker
tornado safety packs. So if the weather, if the electricity goes out, we have flashlights and we have extra food and that kind of stuff. So that's our localized weather thing. Yeah, it's funny. I have a quick little story to tell. I grew up in Michigan and so we had tornadoes all the time. And one time we were home with a sitter. My dad, I think, was out of town. My mom was at the church for some activity and she didn't know what was going on. But we knew that there was a tornado watch.
00:23:59
Speaker
or not a watch, a warning rather, it already touched down. And so we were in the basement, kind of freaked out, really scary weather with the babysitter. Well, my mom had no idea what was going on. Everyone was just hanging out at the church after the activity. And she's like, I'm paying a sitter. I need to get home.
00:24:14
Speaker
So she hops into our 12-passenger van, this high-profile vehicle, and speeds home. And she's like, this weather is crazy. It's impossible to keep this van on the road. And she's fighting with everything she can to hold on to this. Hearing once she gets home, and we're in the basement, and the babysitter's like, how did you get here? He's like, well, I drove here. You're like a tornado, like two miles away, right? Oh, shoot. Probably wasn't very safe. OK. Well, you can stay as long as you need to.
00:24:43
Speaker
So yeah, being a weather watcher is probably smart. So here in Arizona, we do not have tornadoes or hurricanes or really a ton of weather related things, except for monsoons. We do have monsoons in August. And so we do see some flooding. We haven't ever seen anything terrible, terrible. But in my experience of wacky weather, one of these days we will. We're just not prepared for it.
00:25:10
Speaker
I like to talk to my kids about, you know, what's safe to play in and whatnot, you know, when the water starts coming in, you're like, oh, where did that come from?
00:25:17
Speaker
We also worry about droughts obviously because it's the desert and our water has to come a long ways to get here. So we do have water storage. We have two giant blue barrels that we fill up with water and really any water is better than nothing. And we also have a water filtration like tablets and these little filters that we can use that we could even drink out of our pool if necessary. But water is a really important thing for emergencies that a lot of people don't think about because it's a little bit harder to store.
00:25:44
Speaker
And there are containers that are good to store water in and those that are not. So that's something to research.
00:25:52
Speaker
Okay, so other than water, we also have a ton of food storage. That's always been really important to us, just in case. And a lot of times I've had other friends who have had food storage that have ended up using it, not even for like a natural disaster, but because of a job loss. All of a sudden things got tight and they had lots and lots of extra food to dip into, which I think is always a good thing to have around, so.
00:26:16
Speaker
And then lastly, we often have power outages, especially during monsoon season. And that can be an important emergency, especially in the summer when it gets really, really hot. So just to talk to kids and make plans for how to stay comfortable when the power goes out and how to cook, et cetera. Yeah, cooking without power is interesting endeavor, isn't it? Yeah.
Handling Seizures and First Aid Essentials
00:26:38
Speaker
Okay, moving on to seizures because both Bonnie and I have experience with kids who have had seizures. So just basic first aid on seizures is according to WebMD, keep other people out of the way. Clear hard or sharp objects away from the person seizing. Don't try to hold them down or stop the movements. Place them on their side to help keep their airway clear. Look at your watch at the start of the seizure to time it's length because
00:27:07
Speaker
after a certain amount of time it needs attention, and then don't put anything in their mouth.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah. That seems to be a pretty common misconception that you're supposed to like hold their tongue down or something. That's a bad idea. Don't put anything in the mouth. Yeah. Yeah. And just personally, I'm with our son that had seizures. We put him on a preventative, kind of like a keto high fat diet and that manages his seizures and then he outgrew them. So anyway, just a side note there. So how, how old was he at the last seizure? Do you remember? Oh goodness. It's been a while. It's my 14 year old and he's,
00:27:44
Speaker
Oh, I think maybe 10 was his last one. Interesting. Yeah, that's good to know because my little one has had, I believe, four at this point. She's eight and she hasn't had one in a while. It's probably been eight months or so. But for us, it seems to be triggered with illness, which is really interesting because you would think that would be like, you know, a fever related seizure, but it's not necessarily. Sometimes it's just illness going around. So something about her immune system when it gets triggered tends to cause these seizures.
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, I would just say I totally agree with all that you've already said and then just to ditto if in doubt call 911. If it's your first one, it doesn't cost anything to call and to say this is what's happening and oftentimes they'll just walk you through it and they'll help you time it. And we've been told by the neurologist five minutes is the magic number. So if child has been seizing for five minutes and doesn't show any sign of letting up and this is, you know, and you don't have any other experience with seizures or medication to take or anything,
00:28:40
Speaker
definitely call 911 or bring them in. We've had a variety of different seizures. So, you know, we've had the simple absentee seizures where a kid is just kind of staring off into space. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is a seizure doesn't always look like what you know as a seizure, you know, the shaking. Right, right, right. In fact, I think more commonly for us at least have been those absentee and at first we had no clue what was going on. We're like, why won't she talk? Why won't she snap out of it? And then she started to kind of
00:29:08
Speaker
cough some stuff up and shake a little bit. And so we realized what it was. And then there are the grand malls that are really freaky to watch where your kid is convulsing on the ground and vomiting. But regardless, the same protocol.
00:29:25
Speaker
And then, yeah, just, you know, if it happens more than once, I would definitely make an appointment with like a neurologist, see if there's anything else that can be figured out. Everybody's path is different in figuring out what causes these things. And most of the time in little kids, it does not have any lasting effects. But yeah, it's a tricky thing to figure out.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah. Did you know that the keto diet was actually initially developed for kids with epilepsy? Really? No, I did not. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I thought that was very interesting when I was researching that. Okay. Now we're going to move on to our first aid kits and talk a little bit about what we actually have in our first aid kits supplies and, um, in three different areas, cuts and scrapes, bruises and sprains burns. Oh, I guess four different spots, everything else.
00:30:12
Speaker
I can count.
00:30:13
Speaker
Okay, so what we have for cuts and scrapes is I talked about those wound closure strips and hydrocolloid band-aids. They're a gel bandage. You can get them, I think, commonly for blisters is what they're made for, but they just, it's like a second layer of skin and it encapsulates hydration in there so it doesn't get dried out. And the healing time is so much faster and the scarring possibility is way lower. We use hydrocolloid band-aids a lot.
00:30:43
Speaker
That's interesting. I've never even heard of those. But yeah, I do know that the longer you can keep a wound moist, the better. In fact, when I had my skin cancer surgery, I had some skin cancer removed on my nose. They had me keeping the bandage on for a long time. And I was supposed to wash my face, but leave the band. Well, they're like little steary strips. I was supposed to wash my face and pat it dry, but leave the strips on and to not let it get dried out, to put Vaseline on top, which I thought was really interesting. So there you go.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, you've got to go get some of these hydro band-aids. They're really awesome. Cool. Yeah, as far as cuts and scrapes, we also like to keep lidocaine spray on hand because scrapes are really, really painful. It really affects so many nerves just at the very tip. A couple of years ago, I fell off my bike and got really, really badly scraped up. And I remember just having so much sympathy for all the scrapes my kids have and thinking, I'm sorry, I don't have more sympathy. This hurts so bad.
00:31:40
Speaker
We love hydrogen peroxide for just about everything. Not only does it take blood out of clothes, but it cleans wounds really well. Oh yeah. And I'm also, I also have to say I am not a fan of band-aids. I only buy band-aids for like stickers for kids. Why? Why do kids think band-aids are stickers? Like a Christmas time wall by them like their own character band-aids and then they just slap them all over and then they're gone. Yay!
00:32:06
Speaker
I have this mantra, I say all the time, band-aids are for blood. So they'll come to me, I need a band-aid. Do you have blood? Well, no. Well, no band-aids. And they still, you know, they'll still go get the band-aids and slap them on. Band-aids are for blood. And the cute ones are expensive.
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah. So that's just our Christmas present. But for actual wounds, I love to buy just little gauze packages and medical tape. So the thing I love about medical tape is that it doesn't, it's not painful to take off. So
00:32:37
Speaker
Some of these band-aids, especially the fabric-y type, are so painful. And I have kids with some sensitive skin. And when they put that thing on, it is such an ordeal. It's more painful to get it off than it was to have the scrape in the first place. So I am just not a fan of those at all. We just use gauze and tape if it's a real, true, bloody wound.
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah, I cannot convince my kids that it hurts less to just rip it off all at once, that they have to go little hair by hair. Sometimes I have to convince myself, oh, just do it, do it. All right, moving on to bruises and
Natural Remedies for Injuries and Discomfort
00:33:15
Speaker
sprains. Now, I could not raise boys without Arnica. Arnica Montana is a
00:33:22
Speaker
homeopathic and you can get it in a gel and you can also get it in the homeopathic little tablet that you dissolve under your tongue. And I use arnica myself, you know, you bang your shin on something, you know, you're gonna get a big goose egg there. You put arnica on it, it's made from a flower and it immediately, the gel when you put it on, it immediately makes the spot like cool, like icy and it helps so much. And then the bruising, the amount of bruising is way less too. Arnica is my best friend. That's so cool, yeah, I'll have to try that.
00:33:51
Speaker
Yeah, and then for sprains, you know, that things that we can tell obviously aren't broken sprains, then we have like, you know, ankle brace and elbow brace and a wrist brace and all that. Yeah. You know, the year we bought our trampoline, Luke thought it'd be funny to also buy a set of crutches and put those under the Christmas tree.
00:34:15
Speaker
Your husband is such a great sense of humor. He really does. It's because for years I fought the trampoline. I was like, no, no, no. Someone's going to get hurt. Someone's going to bust a head open, whatever. And when we finally got it, I was like, this thing is amazing. Why did I fight it? But that was kind of a little nod to my anxiety. So thanks, dad.
00:34:31
Speaker
Yeah. We're still in a fighting the trampoline stage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is so fun though. It really is. We now have two and we try to keep the little ones on one and the big ones on another. That seems to prevent a lot of problems. Oh, makes sense. Sure. So as far as bruises and sprains go for us, we just have lots of ace bandages and lots of different shapes. We've had to use them quite a few times. And sometimes even just when a kid gets a bump, we're like, oh, we'll just wrap you up. And that makes them feel better.
00:34:56
Speaker
We also love ice packs. We have a lot of reusable ice packs in the freezer at all times, and I love rice bags. You can both freeze them, although I prefer the ice packs for that, but heat them up. It's really, really nice for like sore muscles or anytime you need a warm compress to just stick it in the microwave for a minute or two, and then it can do wonders for sore muscles or anything like that.
00:35:18
Speaker
Cool. I have a rice bag that my sister-in-law made me and I have a cherry pits pillow that my other sister-in-law when she lived in London sent to me. It's full of cherry pits and you do the same thing. You heat it up or you freeze it. Interesting. I will also say the rice bag. I have a really big one that was given to me by one of my midwives for labor. And if you ever have back labor, that is amazing for back labor. If you can stay in one place to just put that on the back, some nice warm heat. Cool.
00:35:46
Speaker
Okay, and then moving on to burns. Kids get burned and it hurts and it's hard to find something to help them with that. So we have basically three things that we use. Aloe, like an aloe plant or aloe vera is awesome for burns.
00:36:02
Speaker
You can get hydrogel that are actually burn bandages, you can buy special burn bandages, and that does the same thing that the regular hydrocolloid bandages do, is just hold that moisture in. And then the last thing that we have discovered for burns is another homeopathic cream ointment. It's calendula cream.
00:36:23
Speaker
It works amazing on burns and it mostly helps. Well, it helps it heal, but it helps take some of the pain away, too, which is like the hard part that I struggled with on burns for years is just getting them to stop crying because it hurts so much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In our experience, anything. So there are creams made with silver and those are notorious for you didn't just say that, right? No, I didn't. But I have because I was looking it up. I just want to make sure.
00:36:53
Speaker
No, I have my first aid kit sitting right next to me because I didn't want to forget anything. And I have like silver gel sitting right here. I just forgot to mention it. So I actually have an experience with a serious burn. When I was a child, I lit my shirt on fire while cooking on the stove. It was actually an electric stove, super weird. But I was burned first, second and third degree and ended up needing a skin graft on the third degree. So I know lots about burns and they are not
00:37:17
Speaker
fun at all. I would suggest to every mom to go Google the different degrees of burns. It's not pretty, but I think everybody needs to know what a third degree burn looks like so you know when to get treatment. Second degree, really the key is if it's not red and it's a serious burn. So first and second degree will be very, very red. Second will blister. Third degree will start looking ashy and white and scary. So if you know what that looks like, always get medical treatment for that. But yeah, there's silver.
00:37:47
Speaker
cream. There's like little, what did you just say, Audrey, that you have? Calendula cream? No. Oh, this silver gel, antimicrobial silver jelly. So they gave me a big pot of this stuff when I was burned and it was a prescription, but you can now get a lot of stuff over the counter and that takes away the pain like nothing else. I just love it. So having some of that on hand is really helpful even just for little ones because
00:38:13
Speaker
We talked about, I can't remember what episode it was, but having kids help that really experiences the best teacher and you don't want your kid to get hurt, but inevitably they're going to pull toast out of the toaster one day and burn their finger or something like that. And to just have something to help them with the pain is really, really, really, really nice.
00:38:32
Speaker
Yeah, another thing on burns is the faster you can get it iced or under cold water, the sooner, no, the less, how do we say it? The less that the burn, the less severe the burn will be. Yeah, it will actually stop burning. Yeah, especially if you've gotten a substance on your skin. So like hot oil or even rice or something that's like stuck to the skin to wipe it off as quickly as you can and put something cold on it to stop that burn.
00:38:57
Speaker
Yeah. One of my genius mom moments was we were at a Mexican restaurant and you know how they bring your, they always say hot plate because they bring it and it's on those super hot plates that they cooked it on. Well, I was holding a baby on my lap and they reached up there and grabbed it. And immediately I grabbed my glass of ice water and dunked their hand in there just like instant. And yeah, and they hardly, they hardly burned at all. That was, that was like my one genius moment. Good job. Just keep a glass of ice water with you in the kitchen all the time.
00:39:27
Speaker
Well, it was at a restaurant. What do you do? You're out and about. You don't have your supply kit with you. And finally, moving on to everything else. So some other items we have in our first aid kit are stuff for bee stings, like I was talking about the tobacco, the little snooze packages, and bug bites. My oldest daughter's actually into some herbs and herbal remedies, and she takes and makes some plantain salve. I'm sure you can Google it and look it up.
00:39:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good one. And then we have a lot of essential oils that we use too. Lavender is good for headaches. Yeah, again, just Google what the different, if you want to keep an essential oil kit. I know there's companies that sell starter kits that'll give you just a little vial of everything and then kind of include what it's good for too. And that's really nice to kind of, I find that essential oils are more soothing for the,
00:40:24
Speaker
like the mind and the reaction and the emotions of the kid. They do help, they have some physical manifestations that they help too. But I think what's nice about essential oils is the way that they help them
00:40:35
Speaker
mentally and emotionally kind of calm down a little bit. Yeah, I agree. Yes. In the past, we have bought like a home medical kit of essential oils, just this little kit put together by a company that has everything from, you know, that could help all the basic household issues, you know. So it's two blends that we use a lot are specific to doTERRA. One is the breathe one. That's really, really helpful for anyone with a stuffy nose. You know, sometimes kids just can't breathe when they
00:41:02
Speaker
get sick. So I'll just put a little bit of that under their nose or on their neck behind their ears and they can, it clears up their sinuses really, really quickly. And lemon works for that as well. And the other one I really like is they have a blend called DigestZen, which is a combination of a bunch of oils that helps with the digestive system. And that seems to help kids with upset tummies or, you know, who have some sort of viral issue that are throwing up.
00:41:26
Speaker
Lastly, the miscellaneous stuff we have in our kit or rather other emergencies we haven't really talked about are like fevers, skin irritants or rashes and vomiting. So this is just kind of common stuff that comes up with your basic run of the mill virus or cold or something that a kid deals with.
00:41:44
Speaker
I would just share fever wise, you know, be sure to have a tolerance for how high you'll allow fevers to go. For me, that's usually like 103, 104. And then I start looking into maybe we need to take you in, especially if it's not coming down on its own. You can, it is important to also cool a child down who's extra hot, you know, it's important to put a kid like in a tepid bath or something if they're having really high fevers because you can run into seizures and other things like that.
00:42:10
Speaker
As far as vomiting goes, same thing just to keep an eye on them. And I think the general rule of thumb is if a kid can't keep anything down for 24 hours, then you take them in to make sure that they don't get dehydrated. So yeah, a lot of that is also just experienced. Oh, yes, definitely. My policy on fevers is that usually a fever is a sign that your body is working, that their body is working on something. And so like, you know, when you work out, you get hot and sweaty while their body is working on healing themselves.
00:42:39
Speaker
sometimes a fever is actually a good thing as long as it's not too high because it means their body's working on trying to heal them. Yeah, that's excellent. I'm glad you brought that up because I think that a lot of moms immediately are like, oh, we need time and I'll watch something. But really, it's important that your body go through that. And I generally only give them something. If my kid is so miserable, they can hardly function. I recently had a
00:43:01
Speaker
My baby had a fever for a couple of days and he was fussy, but okay. And then that last day he just, he could barely eat or whatever. So I gave him a little bit of time so that he could at least sleep comfortably. And then by the next day it was gone. So oftentimes that's what happens. It gets really high and then it breaks and they're good.
00:43:16
Speaker
Okay, so that is everything that we have for you about emergencies. Not fun stuff to think about or deal with, but we would rather help you be prepared than feel super lost and unable to take care of your kid in an emergency. Okay, so we'll link everything we talked about in the show notes. It'll be a rather long show notes this time, but it'll help you add to your medicinal emergency knowledge bank, right? Yeah.
00:43:47
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you've enjoyed this episode, we'd be so grateful if you'd leave us a written review on iTunes.
00:44:10
Speaker
actually went to Costco and bought cereal yesterday, so everybody should be real happy. I'm not going to include the part of the story with a rabies dog head run.