Thomas went hunting for ten days and when he arrived home on Friday, decided that to begin restitution he would take me out to dinner Saturday night. We had a babysitter in place and a restaurant in mind. We both looked pretty decent (Thomas having shaved his mountain man beard and with a fairly recent hair cut you'd have never known he'd been in the wilds of Utah for the past week and a half.)
We arrived at Doug, Adira and Tyler Bishop's house to drop Caelen off. She loves it there, it's one of her homes-away-from-home and Ty and her have a relationship better than a lot of cousins. So she went straight to playing while we adults chatted briefly. Finally we decided to go and just as we were leaving....... Caelen came walking over, tripped and smashed her head directly on the corner of their kitchen wall.
I knew as soon as I saw it that it was gonna be bad and by the time I had her in my arms (which was almost immediately) she had blood running down her face at such an alarming rate it would stop any parent's heart.
It was about an inch long starting at her hair line and going straight down towards her nose and it was nice and wide open. Adria got me towels and rags so fast and in no time we were in the car.
While Thomas drove to the emergency room, I tried to keep pressure on her head and hold the wound shut at the same time. By the time we reached the car she had stopped crying and was only grumpy because I had a towel pressed to her head. She ate Cheerios and smiled and laughed the whole way and about half way there it stopped bleeding.
When we walked in the ER she had caked blood all down her face and a nice gash so they descended upon us pretty quickly but when they saw that she was doing alright, not bleeding, and hadn't blacked out they let us wait for about 20 minutes. When she got her initial exam she was really cooperative and the doctor took my temp to show Caelen that it was OK to have this tool put on your forehead. Then he says, "Mom! You have a fever. 101.5!" (Thomas finally figured out later that I had had a flu shot on Wed and that must be the culprit because I felt fine).
When we went in they put numbing solution on it and bandaged her forehead up for 20 minutes. Then they lay her down on her back, wrapped her like a burrito and we tilted her head back. They irrigated the wound and stitched it up. This part was really hard. She was very upset at not being able to move so was crying. I was trying to calm her down and had a front row seat to how deep the gash was and the stitches. Luckily she didn't lose any tissue so it went back together really cleanly. The doctor said that by the time she's 2 you shouldn't be able to see much of anything there. Poor Thomas was having a hard time watching his baby in such distress and wanted to take her out of there and make it all better.
Seven stitches later we liberated our very sweaty child from her swaddle and when she calmed down her crying she looked at us and started clapping!! Pretty adorable. After that you'd have never known anything was wrong. We got her home, she had a bath, some dinner and finally was in bed by 9:00. This morning she's not acting any different than she ever did, as feisty and adorable as ever. The only difference is that just in time for Halloween she's kind of resembling Franken-baby.
