Pre-Christmas Dramas

We were so nearly there. At the beginning of the week, the end of term had loomed like a horrible deadline, before which I needed to fit in doing the rest of the Christmas shopping, attending various end of term events without forgetting anything, writing the Christmas cards and writing a final feature for work.

But now we were an hour away from the end of Littleboy 1's term. I was finishing off my last few bits of work before a break for the holidays, while Littleboy 2, having broken up a day earlier, was happily esconsed on the sofa with an iPad, having slept in till 9am. All was quiet in the deep dark wood.

And then I got the call from school. The nurse's office. "We seem to have a very unusual problem here, Mrs NVG. Littleboy 1 appears to have a 5p coin stuck to the roof of his mouth, and we can't get it out. We think he may need to go to a dentist, or even A&E."

Littleboy 2 and I rushed up there to find a distraught Littleboy 1 with, indeed, a coin somehow suctioned to the inside of his mouth. Whether or not the crying was to do with embarrassment, pain or the fact that he knew I'd told him a million times not to put money in his mouth, I'm not quite sure.

Having not registered the boys yet with a dentist in London (I was waiting until 6 months after their last American appointment), I was faced with a dire wait at the busiest A&E department in London, and had visions of a dreadful Christmas ahead with Littleboy unable to eat or drink anything, having had the coin surgically removed somehow.

Luckily the school nurse thought of a local dentist who helps the school out with fitting rugby mouthguards. A phone call later and we were down there; the dentist removed the offending coin in seconds.

"Have you ever seen this before?" I asked her. "Er, no", she replied. "I can't say I have."

This is the second time I've been told by a medical professional that something unique has happened to a child of mine. The first was when Littleboy 2, as a baby, managed to get a hair so tightly wrapped around his little toe that it had to be removed by a plastic surgeon.

However, it may run the family; my father-in-law tells me he swallowed a penny (old penny, so quite big) at much the same age. He had to have it removed under chloroform, a most unpleasant experience. So, I think we got off lightly.

Anyway - Littleboy 1 is fine again, and we are excitedly counting down to Christmas. But I don't think we'll be putting any coins in the Christmas pudding....