I heard a scream this morning at 1:30am. It was the kind of scream that wakens you from a dead sleep and gets your heart pounding so hard and fast that you think it might leap right out of your chest. The scream was coming from my daughter's room. "What is going on with her?" I asked as both my husband & I raced into her room and found her hysterical crying. "My ear hurts. Mommy, will you hold me?" I enveloped her in my arms and sat, rocking, on the edge of her bed hoping she'd be soothed back to sleep, thinking that it was odd for an ear infection to come on so suddenly.

After about 10 minutes, she said, "Mommy? Can you make my ear feel better?" My heart sank. "Macy, sweetie, we have to go to see the doctor so we can get some medicine and then your ear will feel better." She responded, "I want Daddy." I guess she thought my husband might have a special trick up his sleeve to alleviate her discomfort. So, I carried her into our room, and laid down with her between us, where we all kind of dozed in & out until 6:30 when the alarm clock rang and my husband got up to get ready for work. As any parent of a toddler knows, it's a challenge to get restful sleep when the toddler overtakes the bed, regardless of how big it is. I got punched in the eye, kicked in the stomach, and head-butted, all the while cuddling my daughter close to me, hoping that I was offering her some type of comfort until I could call the pediatrician's office when they opened. Sure enough, at 8:01am, I called for an emergency appointment. Lo and behold there was one available.

I show up at the pediatrician's office and very efficiently, they get us into a room. The doctor comes in, looks at Macy's ear and says, "Well, it's not infected, but it looks as though a blood vessel ruptured near her eardrum and that is why it's so painful. It'll heal on it's own in a couple of days, so all you need to do is manage her pain with Tylenol.

I breathed a sigh of relief although in the back of my mind I was thinking to myself that a ruptured blood vessel sounds worse than an ear infection. Oh well; all that matters is that she's OK.