My First

Last night I had my first removal of a child. The baby is (as of today) 7 days old (so, six days at the day of removal). It was a hard decision for the office to make, but we had the legal ability to remove on the "likely to suffer harm" part of the statute. Mom had been drinking through her entire pregnancy (for the most part), and fortunately for the baby, he had no physical signs of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Unfortunately though, he's too young to tell if he will have any sort of developmental delays. He was the cutest baby! You know, the kind that makes you want to run right out and start having kids. He slept the whole time, and we were with the family for about 2 hours.

I almost felt guilty last night though. I was totally hyped up on adrenaline because of this removal. From what I hear, it's normal, but looking back on it now, it was such a sad thing! The mom burst into tears when we told her what was happening, and today when I was at a meeting at the court, she was there. Part of me is greatful that I was more just there, it wasn't really my removal, because she didn't really aknowledge me. Cheryl, on the other hand, had to get up and leave the room before the mom saw her. What made it worse was that my schedule today didn't allow for time to process what had happened with anyone. Fortunately, Cheryl and I were in one car last night, and it allowed me to talk it through with her. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to try to have a sit down with Tricia and process it with her. I want to discuss with her the adrenaline rush I had and make sure that I was definitely feeling something that was normal. She would really be the one to ask - she's been in this field for 12 years. I'm also going to try to have my sit down with her tomorrow. From what I understand, I'm not the first person to have this problem with Tricia. So it will be interesting to see what happens.
Today my day was just busy. Long and busy. I met the cutest girl today at the Child Advocacy Center. We had a staff meeting this morning, then I was at the CAC, then off to a meeting with the judge in Portsmouth, then back to the office for 1/2 an hour, then off to a meeting in Seabrook. The little girl at my interview in Seabrook was so funny - she had a loose tooth that fell out during my interview with her. It was hysterical. She was so excited she started running all around the house "Mom! Mom! My tooth fell out! My tooth fell out!" I had to go to the house with the Seabrook police, so there were two detectives, which was funny because she asked one of them to help her clean her tooth off. It cracked me up! The sad part of the interview though, was when I was just getting ready to wrap up, and she hadn't told me anything concerning, until I asked her if there was anything I didn't ask her about that she thought I should know about. She told me that I should ask her if she knew what drugs were. So I did. She proceeded to tell me that good drugs are the ones you take when you have a cold, and that drugs like "weed" are bad drugs and that she has an uncle that uses weed. I'm like "great.... we were doing so good until that came up." So now tomorrow I've got to report that to the supervisor of the worker that's actually on the case and the worker. I'm glad that's not one of mine.

Thank goodness for comp time. Thank goodness even more that I've not got enough comp time acrued to take two days off when we move! That makes me happy. That also reminds me that I've got to fill in the comp time slip. Cheryl and I were out until 7:30 last night and I was out until 6:15 tonight, plus not taking a lunch today, so 7:15.

My doctors appointment... well, lets just say that my doctor is useless. I don't remember if I wrote about this or not, but he took a urine sample while I was there. That was it. That, and he told me that I wasn't actually having pain in my kidneys because my kidneys weren't even where I was complaining of pain. Well, the guy wasn't even looking when I told him where it was, he listed it as being a pain in my hip. It's not my hip, it was my side and back. So when he had the nurses run a quick test on the urine sample, he was like "well, it's not normal, but it's not abnormal." So, tell me, what is between normal and abnormal? Because I didn't know there was middle ground there. Hopefully tomorrow I should get some answers.

Anyway, that's about all for now. It's time for dinner.