Out of the Woodworks...: First trip to the ER!

Christmas was even more memorable this year, as we spent Christmas afternoon as a family of 3 in the Medical City ER. Although our home is very child proof, there was a door stopper on his closet that was missing the rubber end (didn't know this until after the fall...). So, sleepy wobbly 12 month old baby boy falls, hits his head right on the edge of the doorstopper, and ends up with a small, but deep gash on the forehead. I call my awesome friend Alison (who on record had a baby 2 weeks earlier and ALL her family in for Christmas) who happens to be a nurse, a neighbor, and also a mother of a 5 year old boy, and also happened to be home on Christmas afternoon. She said she would take a look at it and give me her professional Boy Mom/RN advice. Carter immediately stopped crying when I opened the door to the garage, and started waving bye bye...have I ever mentioned the boy loves to be outside and loves to GO?! My friend told me since it was on his face, she would probably take him in. So, I call Children's and Med City on the way back home to get wait times and Caleb and I decide to go to Med City as it's closer (although per nurses at work after the fact, one of the benefits of being a Children's employee is playing the card you work there, talk to the charge nurse, and they'll let you bypass the wait...hmm, remember for next time!). We get there and there are 3 other kids in the waiting room and they look sick. I mean, shaking and trembling with 105 fever sick. Although I felt bad for those kids, there was no way I was letting Carter get down and wander around the ER with those kind of germs. So picture 12 month old baby boy with no nap and 2 parents who refuse to let him out of their arms and you get a very very cranky boy who is writhing and arching and screaming to get down. They took us back and gave us a room, so we finally let him down. Even though it was a pediatric ER, it was not very child proof. It was a lot of waiting and frankly, none of us were really in the mood to wait. I look back now with a smile, but Caleb definitely gave the receptionist lady some of his lawyering skills--"you mean you're telling me you have NO idea how long it will be? So, we could be here for days? 2 minutes or 20 hours...can you give me some sort of idea?" and the lady kept telling him no, which made Caleb more frustrated...let's just say there was not lot of "Christmas spirit" on either side :). The nurse practitioner tells us probably stitches but wait for the doctor. We wait... The doctor says we need stitches and will put a numbing cream on, so we wait. The lady finally comes to put the numbing cream on and says--you guessed it, WAIT an hour for it to work, then he'll get stitches. Lucky for all of us, I spotted a red wagon behind the nurses station and ~~asked~~ told the nurse we were using it and needed sani wipes. I sanitized the heck out of that thing and it became our life saver. I think Caleb did over 100 laps around the ER, I probably did 20 :). Once they finally came in for stitches, they wrapped him up like a burrito (you can guess how Carter liked that...), covered up his little face with a drape (sterile procedure) and thankfully called a 2nd nurse in to hold him while they gave him stitches. It was a quick probably 4 minute ordeal, but man it was hard to hear my baby scream like that! They let me hold him, calm him down, and I think the banana I had put in the backpack on the way out the door did a lot more calming than Mama's lovin', but either way he was happy and all stitched up! We got home, I had a little bit of a breakdown, Carter got LOTS 'o attention, and we enjoyed a very nice family dinner next door. Caleb was a champ and my rock through this process as Carter and I were both a little emotional :).

It was definitely memorable, albeit stressful. It also was good for me, as we were there maybe 4 hours...and the families I see at work are there days, sometimes months. Im very thankful we have a healthy, busy, and active boy on our hands. Probably the first, but not the last trip to the ER with our Carter boy!

Here are the iphone chronicle pics: