What to do...

if your toddler swallows a penny. If there are no immediate and clear signs that your toddler is having trouble breathing then have them drink some water. If they can do this without any problems then feed them a piece of bread. If the bread goes down fine as well then you continue life as normal and wait for the penny to pass naturally. However, you must confirm that the penny has passed and, well, there's only one way to go about getting confirmation. How do I know, you may ask. Unfortunately, I am speaking from experience. Tonight, when Lil Sis was supposed to be tucked snuggly in her bed, she was ingesting a penny instead. A penny that I had spotted on top of her dresser when I'd put her to bed 20 minutes earlier. A penny that I should've picked up and taken out of the room, obviously. I didn't. Because we've never had a problem with Lil Sister putting things into her mouth that don't belong, until now. We could tell that she was out of bed and when J checked on her, she started crying and said that she'd swallowed a penny, a claim that he didn't take too seriously until I confirmed that there was indeed a penny missing from the top of her dresser. Before you could say, "Supercalafragilistic!" he had that pretty penny (and the Girl who'd swallowed it) in the car and headed to the nearest ER while I calmly put a call into the pediatrician's office. Ten minutes later the on-call nurse called me back and gave me the aforementioned steps, negating our need for the ER. The only catch, if the penny hasn't passed in three days then we'll have to take Little Sister in for retrieval of the penny. Stay tuned...