Emergency

This news is a bit dated, but it was such a milestone for us that I didn’t want to miss the chance to write it up. Plus, I think I’m finally over most of the mommy guilt, so I’m able to talk about it without kicking myself too hard.

p{color:gray}. Photo: Rosie on her birthday, complete with stitches.

Saturday night, March 13, 2010, 6:30 pm — the night before Rosie’s second birthday. Lucy and Rosie were playing happily in the bathtub. As is my custom, I was cleaning off the sink and toilet while they had a bit of “splashing time” with the shower curtain closed. I left the room for a moment to toss my dirty bathroom-cleaning-rag into the laundry, when I heard a “thunk” and a cry from Rosie. I dashed back in and I found that Rosie was bleeding from the mouth — not exactly gushing, but pretty dramatically. We knew we needed to determine the source of the blood. We quickly got her out of the tub, dried her off, and took a peek. We saw that she had bitten her upper lip with her bottom teeth (a casualty from a “gesture”:/news/2008/clowning-around/ she makes while concentrating). No teeth seemed to be loose, which was a relief, but she definitely had two deep cuts on her upper lip. Papa got the bleeding stopped pretty quickly (it’s that Boy Scout training, after all these years), but we were concerned that the wounds might not heal easily, since they were on that stretchy upper lip — and Rosie was already starting to poke at them with her fingers, tongue, and teeth. After a call to our doctor, Rosie got dressed, and she and Mama were off to the nearby Swedish Covenant Hospital emergency room.

Once we arrived, our pace slowed quite a bit. There was a lot of waiting. We looked at some fish. Rosie amazed me by pointing to an illustration of a stop sign and saying “Octogon! Eight sides!” (Thank you, Sesame Street video podcast!) We played games on my iPod. I swung Rosie around like a monkey in the hallway. We waited for a long time. Finally, the surgeon came in and decided that she could, indeed, put a few tiny stitches in to help Rosie’s wounds heal. Rosie was quite brave about it, but it was not a pleasant experience for her. They needed to inject anesthetic in her lip (apparently topical anesthetic doesn’t work well in that area), so that initial needle poke definitely got her worried. I did my best to encourage her, smile, and cheer her on. When she was all done, she looked like she had a tiny moustache. We were both glad to get back home and put her down to bed at 10:30 pm — three and a half hours after her usual bedtime. I tried not to cry about scarring her sweet face for life with my negligence.

But I really needn’t have worries. Rosie’s wounds have healed quite nicely, especially with all of her admonitions to be “gentle with owie.” She didn’t seem to have any pain from the wound, and she celebrated her “birthday”:/news/2010/rosies-birthday-interview/ the following day with vigor.

Five days later, Rosie got her stitches removed. “Dr. Goldberg! Stitches out!” I was concerned that the removal would be scary or painful for her (and got some great advice from friends on soothing her), but Dr. Goldberg snipped them out so quickly Rosie didn’t even make a peep. We celebrated by picking up some donuts for a special treat.

Even though this was a pretty minor injury, our lives have been changed. Mama is no longer allowing “splashing time” to occur behind the closed shower curtain (even though it’s transparent). Rosie will probably have two tiny scars on her upper lip (although we’ve heard good things about the effectiveness of Mederma for Kids). We will never forget the events that surrounded her second birthday. We’ll always be very grateful that no one was injured more seriously. And we’ll keep hoping this is the last time we’ll need to worry about stitches for these girls!