So... Saturday, September 24th... Ramie and Maya had been wanting to go to the "park" (the local elementary school playground) all day. We finally went around supper time. Loaded up my awesome cheap double stroller and off we went. Maya climbed this spider web thing for the first time.
And here's Bryson on the playground equipment I had a hard time describing to every nurse and doctor we had to deal with in the next couple hours...
The thing wobbles. It's like a suspended skinny bridge/ balance beam. Bryson decided he needed to jump on it. Maya decided she needed to stick her finger in the end (or maybe try crawling on it at the same time he was jumping? I don't know exactly how it happened).
I see her holy-crap-that-hurt face and prepare to gather her in my arms for the mommy-makes-it-all-better hug... her left index finger has the skin all peeled back on the padded part in the first section. Then it starts to bleed. Hilarious and sad are Maya's words: "I'm dripping!" She was more freaked out about that than the pain.
I have Jared grab a baby wipe so I can catch come blood and check things out, then of course apply pressure after examining the extent of the damage... doesn't look too bad at first, then I find a deep gash (thus all the blood) right in the bend of her finger. Jared looks, too, and we decided yup, need to take her in.
Jared starts home to get the car (which is actually our friends' suburban so we could fit the whole family for the weekend- we need to get one ourselves someday...), luckily Addison is already asleep in her car seat loaded on the stroller, so Bryson starts pushing that and I tote Maya on my hip while squeezing her finger. After she's calmed down a bit she asks "Mommy, your boo boo's all better?"- I hadn't really carried her since giving birth 6 weeks before!
Jared met us when we were about halfway home, we loaded into the car, I held Maya's hand the whole way... Jared had the sense to have her keep her finger bent to stop the flow of blood. Of course I had to help hold it closed (and I think we had a band-aid around it. I'm one of those cool moms who carries bandaids) and hold her hand, anyway, because she needed mommy!
And off we went to urgent care. Luckily there were very little people there (unlike when Addison and I went for thrush 3 weeks before- oh the joy that was...) so the triage nurse brought us over right away. Maya freaked out a bit when we had to unwrap her finger to show him, but not too bad. The bleeding started again pretty quickly, so closed it back up... he had a doctor come right over to look at it. The consensus was we needed to take her to the children's hospital. Fingers cannot be locally numbed, must have a shot, and they didn't want to traumatize her- sad for her, and it would make it harder for them to get a good look at it and clean it up and stitch it if she was freaking out. So she's need to be sedated. They wrapped her hand up good- it looked like she didn't have a finger. I wish I'd taken a picture. It was kinda funny. She thought now it was all better. But the night was far from over!
So we headed to
Doernbecher's. It's up in the hills and difficult to find. Luckily Jared has navigation on his phone so we could get there in one piece (though it wasn't working right so I was getting us a bit off track for a little while). Oh, and another thing- the suburban has one of those big nice luggage rack things on top so it was hard to find parking- didn't always fit in the garages! At both places Jared dropped us and went to find a place.
Checked in quick and went into the children's waiting area. There was one other little girl and her family. We got called in after a few minutes and Maya just wanted to stay in the waiting room because it had cool stuff!
Long story short- x-rays, a lot of waiting (but not too bad), then laughing gas to disorient her while they gave her a numbing shot and cleaned it and gave her 3 stitches and wrapped it in a "dinosaur band-aid"- that stretchy sticks-to-itself stuff they use when you give blood. It was bright green with dinosaurs on it.
When they were just about done, Jared brought Addison in- it had been long enough that the bottle was gone and she was hungry so I had to nurse her. It wasn't our most successful moment, but she got enough in to keep her content for awhile so I could hand express enough to tide her over until we got home. It was the first time I've ever done that and it was easier than I thought it would be! But back to Maya...
Went home, she ate a little (hadn't had dinner and it was 10:30 by now! She had some fruit snacks at urgent care and that's it!), watched Word World (which is no longer on netflix. Are you kidding me?!?), and went to bed no problem. Pretty sure we gave her some pain killers, too.
Then she was fine (mostly)! Her dad came up to see her for a little while the next day. She complained of minor pain maybe once or twice in the next couple days and kid tylenol/ibuprofen tastes great so that was no problem, so she was okay. I think it was Monday we unwrapped it. She took one look and freaked out: "spider!" I had to try really hard not to laugh! I explained as best I could then she talked about her stitches the rest of the week. (and the first few days kept relaying her saga. I wish I'd video taped her while she was into talking about it!) She had to have a "dinosaur bandaid" again. They'd left the roll on the counter (not much left) so we took it home. After that she was ok with regular bandaids (and neosporin of course).
The next Monday- 9 days after the fact, I managed to get the stitches out on my own with these crappy little scissors that came in a manicure set from the dollar store. I somehow lost one while moving them to the windowsill (gotta have sunlight for photos due to my lack of flash) to document! Then we had to wrap it in a "dinosaur bandaid" again.
Only problem since is Maya trying to rub off (with a baby wipe) the funny skin that is in the area, but she's stopped that now. The little scissors are still on the windowsill, so she talks about how I took out her stitches.
I regret never recording Maya in her walker as a baby. She was amazing at getting around corners and stuff. Now I regret not taking more pictures of this ordeal and recording Maya retelling the saga (the funniest time was on the way home from church the next day when she called Bryson "Jared's boy." She also always said "...and I was dripping..."). Oh, well. There's more to life than those sorts of things. (and I'm being terrible about documenting Addison's life thus far, so they're about even now, I guess! :) )
SO... there ya have it. It was more stressful for me than her, now it seems a not-that-big-a-deal distant memory and life goes on! And now I need to get to bed. It's past my bedtime and who knows when my little chubbalub will be up to eat. Oh, one more thing- at urgent care they told us that they often use a versed lollipop to knock kids out. We'd been telling Maya that she'd probably get a lollipop, and since she didn't, she wouldn't let us live it down. I finally found a ring pop in the candy stash we rarely get into and told her it was her special lollipop, so she was satisfied.
Goodnight, folks!
