Trip to the Hospital - Number One

September 30, 2008 - 5:00 PM Chris was on call today, so I had the kids to myself. Not something unusual, but never fun, nonetheless. We were sitting down at the dinner table and I was juggling feeding both of the kids and myself. I noticed that Grant had pushed back against the table and was leaning on just two legs of the chair. While reaching to pull him back to the table, I was explaining that you just can't do that - you could fall back and really hurt yourself. As I tried to help him come back to all four legs, he swung his arm, loudly proclaiming, "No, Mommy!" Well, the swinging arm provided enough momentum for me to not be able to save the inevitable fall, and down he went - straight back against the floor. My initial response was to want to say, "I told you not to lean back in your chair because this is exactly what could happen." As I picked him up from the floor and held him, this statement was stopped mid sentence because I realized that blood was trickling down my arm. I looked and, sure enough, he had cracked his head open. He was screaming, Mason was screaming because he wanted more food, and I was really freaking out. I got 4 or 5 papertowels and applied pressure for several minutes and the paper towels were pretty soaked. So I paged Chris, adding the numbers 911 after my phone number so he knew it was an emergency and he needed to call me back. I asked him if I should bring Grant in and he told me to go ahead and bring him up to the OB floor where he was working and he'd take a look at him. Poor little Grant was very distraught. He wanted his daddy so badly. All he kept saying was "Mommy, want Daddy! Fix! Mommy, Daddy Fix!" I found it amazing that he knew that Daddy could fix him. Mason screamed the entire 25 minute drive to the hospital. Once Grant knew we were going to see Daddy, he sat in the back seat like a brave little man chatting happily about how his Daddy was going to fix him. When we got there, Chris came in the room and Grant went running. He held on to his Daddy so tightly and wouldn't even come back to me so that Chris could look at the wound. It was about a 1 inch cut and was gaping quite widely. After 2 other doctors looked at it and gave their two - cents (ranging from do nothing at all to let's put staples in), Chris decided to at least put some dermabond on it (less invasive - it's an adhesive that holds the skin together). So Grant endured us holding him down and holding his cut together, something that I cannot believe was pleasant by any means as evidenced by his screams. But all in all, he was a happy boy that his daddy had fixed him. Daddy was his hero. We came home and I let Grant stay up late and watch a movie with me to give the gash some more time to heal before he laid on it for the night. It was a successful trip to the hospital. Hopefully our next trip won't be for a long while, if ever.