Stitches

So we survived our first trip to the ER.* To make a long story short, while we were in St. Louis this past weekend, Ian was climbing on a chair and lost his balance and hit his head on a windowsill. As you can see, four stitches later he is doing just fine and hardly the worse for wear.

I knew when I saw the (really deep!) cut that he would need stitches. I also knew that wounds on the head bleed a lot and that, despite that, I needed to stay calm because Ian would read my fear. I tried. I really did. But, I’m sorry, my BABY had blood running down his face! So much blood—all over him, all over me, all over the carpet and microfiber chair** (which I had actually worried about earlier when Simon scraped his knee near the chair and drew blood), all over the carseat. Seriously, a lot of blood. And, yeah, I panicked. A little. In the whole scheme of things, I think we did alright.

The ER itself was a decent experience, all things considered. They got us in immediately (a toddler’s face covered in blood and and a very frightened mother helped I’m sure). There was no parking, so Jason had to park a couple of blocks away (ugh). The admitting nurse kept telling me, “It looks worse than it is,” which apparently was true because after the initial triage, we waited in a room—long enough for Ian to fall asleep, actually. Then after the drama of getting the stitches (seeing him restrained/helping to restrain him was so, so hard on this mama), we waited again for paperwork (and again, sweet kiddo fell asleep).

I was so sorry to miss dinner with Brook and Lou, Jason, and Chloe, but by all accounts Simon was well behaved and had a good time without us. I can’t even begin to say how thankful I was for our friends.

Jason was, of course, amazing throughout. And later it occurred to me how nice it was to get through the experience together and without any arguing (even in the TAKE THIS EXIT! and NO! TURN HERE! driving moments). I’m so deeply grateful for him and was especially aware of that during this surreal evening. I tried to rehash again with him on the way back home to Lincoln, and his response was so classically Jason: “With all due affection, honey, how many times are we going to have to process this?” So he wrote down his feelings for me, so I would always have a record:

The follow-up literature the hospital gave us said that the scar could be minimized by applying sunscreen once a day for a year. I have mixed feelings about that. In theory, it would be nice to minimize the scar, but realistically, I’m not going to remember sunscreen every day. Also, Jason was a little horrified (or at least feigned horror) at the thought of downplaying Ian’s first “badge of honor.”

* We actually did take Simon to the ER once, but this was our first panicked, bloody, plan-out-what-you’ll-say-to-the-officer-who-pulls-you-over type of trip to the emergency room.
** Apparently, club soda does wonders to remove blood from microfiber and carpet. Blot, don’t rub. Phew!