@@ Mom Left Baby In Sink For The Whole Day - When Doctor Discovers Why, He Starts To Cry
Sally had always wanted a child. But when her wish was fulfilled and her son Tom was born, she found that she wasn’t as happy as she'd expected. From the day of his birth, weird things started to happen around her. Finally, one day when she woke up Tom, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Filled with panic, Sally immediately put him in the sink but knew it wasn't a long-term solution to this worrying development. Even though she hated going to the hospital, she soon had no choice but to take her son there anyway.
She never imagined the doctor would react the shocking way he did…
When the doctor first laid eyes on baby Tom, he wasn't too worried. There was nothing visibly wrong with the baby and he silently told himself it was likely just another overly anxious new mother. But Sally insisted there was something seriously wrong with her son, telling the doctor that she had already put him in the sink for a whole day. Now some eyebrows were raised…
As the doctor asked Sally more questions, he realized things were far more serious than he'd first thought. When he carefully asked Sally if she could explain her reasoning for putting baby Tom in the sink, the doctor could barely believe her answer. But why? What was Sally's reason for leaving her baby in the sink for such a long time? Was she losing her mind? Was tiny baby Tom in danger?
Taking baby Tom into his arms, the doctor examined the infant more carefully, quickly finding that there was something very wrong indeed. With Sally still anxiously waiting for answers, he wasn't sure if he should tell her the truth or not. Would it upset Sally even more?
But what was wrong with baby Tom? Why did his mother put him in the sink, and could the doctors still save him?
Baby Tom was any first-time mother's dream. He was an adorable, chubby little bundle of joy filled with bubbles of laughter and big, curious eyes taking in the world around him. One other special little thing about Baby Tom was that he was born on Friday the 13th. Unfortunately for this ray of sunshine, he was born to a deeply superstitious woman named Sally. And even worse, the events surrounding his birth were filled with deep mystic omens.
You see, Tom was born over a week later than expected. Sally, already anxious about the new journey of motherhood awaiting her, began to grow more anxious by the hour as Tom's due date came and went. But her biggest fear became a reality when she realized she would be welcoming her baby into the world on a day she considered to be very unlucky. Not only that, but the hospital lights began to flicker as they rolled her into the emergency delivery room. Things were not looking good!
Caught in the pain of contractions, Sally listened in horror as the nurse explained that the doctor Sally had been seeing for her entire pregnancy had just been admitted to the hospital herself after she'd taken a bad fall down some stairs. Another doctor would cover for her but Sally was now very worried about how troubled the first few hours of her son's life were going to be. She could barely imagine what the rest of his life would be like.
Tom was a happy baby
Sally was distraught, even though the hours following giving birth to her healthy baby boy were fine. Soon, Sally was released to take her baby home with lots of reassurance from nurses that everything was going to be okay. Tom quickly proved to be a very relaxed and stress-free baby but that didn't stop Sally from watching her baby with an even more paranoid focus than most new mothers. Tom crossed each milestone with ease but then the unimaginable happened.
She researched old stories
It was true that compared to most babies Tom was a breeze. He only cried when he was hungry and he adjusted to change far quicker than most babies his age. Sally, on the other hand, was anything but fine. She constantly worried that the bad luck created by his day of birth would strike and her precious baby would suffer... or worse. Sick of worry, she decided to do some research.
Sally searched through her mystical books for any accounts about children like Tom born on Friday the 13th. When her books gave her nothing beyond a line or two about the superstitious meaning of the day, she took to the internet for stories. But there was nothing specific enough. Sally frowned, knowing what she would have to do. The very next day, she took Tom on a stroll through their small town. There was a very special shop she needed to find...
Hanging outside a small shop was a sign reading “Antoinette's Healing Herbs and Spices” and bearing the same symbol as the one Sally wore on a cord around her neck. It was a shop she had passed many times before but had never felt brave enough to go inside. She just hoped and prayed that the answers she needed would be here.
Scooping Tom out of the stroller, she tucked him tightly into her arms and stepped into the store, feeling determined. She carefully scanned each aisle, noting familiar herbs and tools which assured her that the store was legitimate. Eventually, she made her way to the book section and began to scan the titles. She scrolled through the rows until she found a binder book that stood out to her.
The book was old and dusty, the binding starting to fall apart. There was no description on the back, so Sally instead flipped through the pages, hoping to find possible tales and protections for babies born on Friday the 13th. However, twenty minutes later, Sally felt sick to her stomach. The stories in the book were troubling and made her feel even more anxious and stressed than before. Seeing no other way, she made up her mind.
With little Tom cradled in her arms, Sally bought the book (despite the enormous price) and hurried home with it, following the detailed cleansing ritual detailed in its crumbling pages. Afterward, she tightly held Tom, who was still peacefully fast asleep, and cuddled with him for hours until some of her worry faded. Finally, placing him back in his crib, Sally headed to her own room to take a well-needed nap.
But Sally's nap lasted a lot longer than she had intended. Springing up from bed in shock, she grabbed the clock on her bedside table and read the time. Guilt flooded her when she saw it was nearly half past ten at night. Why wasn't Tom crying? He must be so hungry! Sally groaned, shame filling her for failing at such a basic task of motherhood. Still feeling exhausted, she pulled herself out of bed and went to go check on her baby boy.
Crawling out of bed, Sally walked into the hall, an unsettled feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. She felt terrible to have overslept so much, but it was worrying that Tom hadn't woken her with his cries for food. Something was wrong, she could feel it. She quickened her pace and opened the door to Tom's room. She was greeted with apparently peaceful silence and yet... something felt wrong.
Sally crept into Tom's room, her stomach in knots. Getting closer to the crib, she peeked over the edge to check on Tom. From the quiet, she had assumed that he was still asleep but was shocked to find his wide eyes staring back at her. The baby was still and visibly awake but something was very wrong. Moving the night net aside, Sally took a closer look at her son and gasped in horror.
Sally felt her panic begin to grow. Tom blinked slowly, his eyes warming in recognition as he smiled up at his mother's worried face. But Sally could not return the smile. This was worse than she could have ever imagined. How could she have kept sleeping when something so awful had been happening to her baby in the other room?
Sally moved on autopilot, every fear she'd ever had about her boy clamoring in her head. Grabbing her son, she headed downstairs and straight into the kitchen. Flicking on the lights, she stared at her smiling baby, her heart pounding. But Tom seemed like his usual happy self. How was he smiling and calm when it was clear that something was very wrong with him?
Desperately trying to think of what to do to help her son, Sally made a quick decision. Tom needed to be cleaned. Gently placing her son in the sink, Sally supported his head as she filled it up with warm water. Making sure he wasn't uncomfortable and wasn't in danger of slipping under the water, Sally paced up and down the kitchen. She was at a loss. What could she do to save her poor baby?
Sally tried to keep her face and voice calm so she didn't alarm Tom with her worry. Searching through her bag on the kitchen table, she quickly dug out the copy of the book she had bought from the holistic shop the day before. Closing her eyes before letting out a sigh, Sally desperately hoped that she would find some kind of helpful remedy in the book.
Keeping a careful eye on Tom in the sink, Sally read through the book, finding several cleansing remedies that she thought might help. She took out the ingredients, glad that she kept her cabinet of herbal ingredients stocked up. Mixing together a few lotions, she took Tom out of the sink, gently dried him with a soft towel, and applied the lotions to Tom's skin. But after a few hours, there were no visible improvements despite the promises made in the book.
This was not good. What would happen to her baby? Sally searched the book again, looking for another remedy. After another cleansing bath, she applied the next lotion, hoping for better results. For a while, it looked like it had worked. Things seemed to have settled and Sally relaxed slightly. She'd never seen anything like the livid red spots before, but now it seemed they were gone. Or were they...?
The rash came back overnight, but this time worse. Tom's skin began to look like dry, itchy scales, going red and sore. Soon, Tom's tiny body was covered with the kind of blemishes you saw in horror movies. Sally feared that the curse had finally been activated in her son's life. Tom was in serious danger and his quiet, content personality began to change. Soon he was wailing and screaming almost nonstop.
Sally tried everything to soothe her son and calm him down, but nothing worked. She covered him in the lotions and gave him ritual cleansing baths but none of it worked. Tom normally enjoyed playing with his blocks or watching Peppa Pig, but nothing made him smile anymore. The only thing that seemed to give him any kind of relief was putting him in the sink in warm water.
Sally was now spiraling into a full panic as she watched the curse of his birth slowly consume her son. Not only that, but she was quickly running out of ingredients for the home remedies that were supposed to soothe and heal and protect him. She couldn't leave him in the sink forever, even though it seemed to be the only thing that made Tom stop crying these days.
Sally only really had one option left, and she didn’t like it. She was going to have to go outside to take Tom to a doctor, even though it was her least favored option. She hated it, actually. The doctor's office had never been a fun place for her. She had spent most of her childhood going in and out of the hospital and didn’t want her son to live through the same. But she would do whatever was needed to save Tom's life.
You see, Sally had suffered from a strange sickness her whole childhood. Most of her early years were spent being dragged in and out of the hospital for MRI scans, X-rays, observation, different medicine trials, and other scary, uncomfortable things for a small child to experience. The doctors kept claiming that they could cure whatever was wrong with her but were never able to definitely find the cause.
At the age of fifteen, exhausted from hospitals and doctors and false hope, Sally had given up on her health and started to get depressed. That was until she went to see a holistic doctor. He prescribed something she had never heard of before, and her health improved enough that she was able to have some semblance of a life.
The strange symptoms gradually faded as Sally grew older. But now that her son’s health was declining rapidly, she worried that she had passed her illness onto him. Her mother had always told her that she was cursed and the illness was just proof of that. Was Tom going to have to suffer through years of hospitals and uncertainty because of his own curse? Sally just didn't know but she was too afraid of the doctor to go there yet.
Despite knowing she didn't have the money for a course of treatment, Sally found the number for the holistic doctor who had treated her as a teenager. Maybe she would be able to beg for some help for her son. After all, it had worked for her. He might be able to help her son in the same way he helped her. But when her call went through, she got the most horrible news.
Much to Sally's shock and heartbreak, the doctor had passed away just a few days earlier under some very strange circumstances. A cause of death had yet to be discovered because his body appeared to have been perfectly healthy. Thanking the receptionist, Sally sighed and hung up the phone. She didn't like it, but she really had no other choice now.
Almost shaking with fear, Sally put the last of the specialist lotions she had made into her purse, knowing that the doctors would want to know what she had been using. As soon as she took Tom out of the sink to get him dressed for the doctor, he started crying loudly again. He was a very unhappy baby, that was clear. Trying to tell him that she was sorry and was trying to help, Sally got him dressed, put him in the stroller, and walked out the door with Tom still screaming.
Poor baby Tom wailed the whole way. On the bus. As they walked through the park. Going through the shopping center. Everyone that Sally passed on the street stared at her. She felt so ashamed, avoiding their eyes and walking as fast as she could. She knew how it looked, with her son constantly crying and looking so ill. She wanted to scream along with him, maybe yell at everyone giving her a dirty look that she was trying her best.
As if things couldn't get any worse, when Sally finally arrived at the ER with an exhausted but still crying Tom, she found it was packed with people. The receptionist told her the waiting time could possibly be as long as an hour. Sally almost crumbled to the ground in tears of frustration and exhaustion. The day had been filled with nothing but bad news.
Tucking the stroller into the furthest corner of the room as far away from the other people as she could manage, Sally took a seat and put Tom on her lap. He whimpered and whined for a while, not wanting food when she offered it, and eventually fell asleep, exhausted from all the crying. Sally just hoped that he would stay asleep for the coming hour.
The hour crawled by and there were a lot of names called. However, none of them were Sally's. A few times, Sally walked up to the receptionist to ask if she knew how much longer it was going to be but the woman could only say she didn't know. Sally was scared that Tom could wake up at any moment now and start screaming again.
Feeling faint from so many days of almost no food or sleep, Sally was digging through her bag for some water when she accidentally knocked one of the glass bottles filled of her lotion onto the floor. The milky liquid sprayed everywhere and glass scattered across the floor. The sound startled Tom, and to Sally’s horror, he woke up. Immediately, reminded of the discomfort he was in from his itchy red skin, the poor baby started crying again. Loudly.
Sally felt terrible, expecting to get yelled at or even thrown out of the ER but everyone was so kind. People made sure that she avoided all the glass as she moved the stroller containing baby Tom and the next person to be called offered to let Sally go instead. Everyone seemed to understand that the baby needed attention as soon as possible. Sally was so grateful that she nearly cried herself.
The doctor was just as kind, getting Sally some water as soon as she sat down. Tom seemed to be able to tell that help was on the way, reducing his unhappy wails to quiet little sniffles. Sally nervously began telling the doctor her story. She told him about her childhood and her fears of passing on her strange illness to her son. She made it very clear that Tom had been perfectly fine until just a few days ago.
Gradually feeling more comfortable, Sally started to tell the doctor about her superstitions and her fears that Tom's illness came from a curse. As she told the doctor about Friday the 13th and her fear of a curse, she could have never imagined how the doctor would react. To her shock, all he could do was smile.
When Sally was finally done telling her story, the doctor didn't say anything for a little while. He stared at her with a big grin on his face as if this was all a massive joke and didn’t say a word. Sally began to get angry, kicking herself for ever coming back to a doctor when she knew what they were like. She wanted an explanation, but he gave her something else.
The doctor opened his mouth but instead of saying anything, burst into uncontrollable laughter. He slapped his leg, and he even cried a little bit. Sally flushed hot with anger and embarrassment, feeling disrespected and hurt by the doctor's reaction. This was why she hated everything about the hospital. She had been vulnerable, desperately seeking help, and was instead going to be laughed at.
As a final attempt to get the doctor's attention about just how serious the situation was, she took Tom out of the stroller and lifted up his tiny shirt to show the worst of the reddened and peeling rash. At this, the doctor stopped laughing, quickly realizing that this wasn't some prank that his colleagues were trying to play on him. He now felt terrible, looking at the distraught mother in front of him.
Quickly putting on a more professional attitude, he gently took Tom from his mother to examine the crying baby. Being as gentle as possible and talking quietly to the little boy the whole time, he looked him up and down without saying a word. Then, trying to sound as nonjudgemental as he could, he asked Sally what ingredients she had used in her homemade lotions, suggesting that Tom might be slightly allergic to some of the ingredients.
Sally showed him the book, and he read through the recipes carefully, seeing nothing that could have caused this type of reaction. Most of them were just good, old-fashioned herbal remedies. He typed something on his computer and wrote something down. All this time, Sally waited nervously for what his conclusion would be.
After a few minutes, the doctor looked back at Sally. He asked her what she had been doing for the past few days apart from the lotions to try to give Tom some relief and why she had waited so long to come to the doctor. She told him that she had kept Tom in the sink in warm water as that seemed to soothe him the most. At this, a light of realization lit up the doctor's eyes.
The doctor finally explained what was wrong with Tom. As she listened, Sally couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How could it be something so simple? She'd been so afraid of curses and her own superstitions that she hadn't stopped to consider how it might be something far more simple in the end.
The doctor explained that Tom was suffering from quite a strong case of chicken pox which would clear up soon enough. But the scaling on the skin and his redness were caused by being constantly submerged in the warm water. The lotions had helped a little but weren't strong enough to soothe both the water damage and the chicken pox. The doctor prescribed a lotion, this one just a more modern and powerful version of the one Sally had been making, and Tom’s skin cleared up in a few days. Everything was just fine in the end.
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