Leyla managed to open up the baby gate and fell down a flight of stairs. All in 3 seconds. Multiple lacerations in her face and mouth. Currently waiting at the child's hospital with her blood on my shirt.

Luckily the bleeding has stopped and she's more consolable.

Not a happy day.
 
Leyla managed to open up the baby gate and fell down a flight of stairs. All in 3 seconds. Multiple lacerations in her face and mouth. Currently waiting at the child's hospital with her blood on my shirt.

Luckily the bleeding has stopped and she's more consolable.

Not a happy day.
Oh man, I'm sorry. Glad to hear she's otherwise ok though, and it's not more serious.
 
Leyla managed to open up the baby gate and fell down a flight of stairs. All in 3 seconds. Multiple lacerations in her face and mouth. Currently waiting at the child's hospital with her blood on my shirt.

Luckily the bleeding has stopped and she's more consolable.

Not a happy day.
When my son was a little over one, he gashed his head open on a door frame. Seeing that little man try so hard to be brave while they put in stitches still brings a tear to my eye.
 
When my daughter was two she managed to climb up and sit on the counter and got a knife to cut a brownie out of a pan for herself, but managed to slice her toe wide open, make a trail of blood across the house to where the rest of us were with her prize, and never even noticed it had happened until she saw us react to her trail of bloody footprints. That needed stitches.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
When my son was a little over one, he gashed his head open on a door frame. Seeing that little man try so hard to be brave while they put in stitches still brings a tear to my eye.
Oh man. I had to get stitches in my leg when I was 4. It's one of my earliest memories because it hurt so much and I was a screaming, wailing, inconsolable mess.
 
I completely bifurcated my tongue tripping while getting out of the bathtub when I was around 3. My mom said she'd never seen so much blood, just flowing out of my mouth. I was too young to remember, but I'm told it looked much worse than it actually is. Even though I had a forked tongue for a short bit, it turns out tongues heal extremely quickly.
 
Thanks you all for the well wishes.

This isn't day I'd like to relive but we're lucky enough to know she'll be fine. Apparently baby booboos heal fast and she won't need any stitches. She sure has been cranky all day and waiting at the hospital didn't help much.

It's interesting to note that I'm exhausted yet I practically did nothing but worry about the well-being of my child. Is this what mental exhaustion is? Cause it sucks. I'd much rather play Dragon Age 2 or watch Mystic River.

All it takes is a few seconds folks and a little cute thing does something incredibly silly that can hurt her pretty badly. We thought we child-proofed the house enough but I guess I need to change a gate because it didn't do jack shit as she was able to open it and fall through the amount of time it takes you to recover from a sneeze.
 
Do not beat yourself up about it. Do your best and let her know how much you love her on a regular basis, and she'll be all right.
 

fade

Staff member
Yeah I feel you there. I hate the ones that replay over and over in your mind, and you can't stop thinking about how much worse it could've been.
 
I can't even count how many times my kids have injured themselves, had one of us accidentally hurt them, or underwent some other painful event. They were all terrifying at the time, more so for us than the kids. Lily only remembers her trip to the ER when she needed to have her chin glued closed mostly because I also have a scar on my chin in the same spot. Noah doesn't even remember being in the hospital for 2 days when he was four years old because of suspected meningitis (a spinal tap and multiple blood draws are traumatic for all parties involved, let me tell you).
I'm sure you're doing your best to keep her safe and happy. Even when you take every precaution you can think of, they always seem to find some way to foil your best laid plans. I hope she heals quickly and that all is well.
 
When I was about a year old, I stuck my hand into the back of a large porch fan. One of those 4 foot tall jokers that has an electric motor in one corner that runs a fan belt. I got my hand caught in the pulley and wore a large burn on the side of my hand. My brothers said I sounded like an ambulance pulling into the drive-way. My parents said that I did not bleed, but exposed my knuckle on my pinky. I still carry that scar.
 
I cut my eyebrow open on the sliding shower door track of my parents' bathtub when I was a baby. I don't know exactly how it happened. I just know it bled enough that my mom called my dad in hysterics to come home from work. He said by the time he got there I was sitting on the floor playing and my mom was sobbing about how badly I was hurt. I still have the scar. When I go get my eyebrows waxed it is a source of frustration to the technician since my eyebrows will never be even.
 
Cary also has a scar on his eyebrow from his grandma (my mother). He was reaching to play with a glass cocktail shaker when his grandma spotted him doing this and panicked that he would shatter it and cut himself (it's a thick glass shaker). So she lunged for him, and tripped, and crashed into him, slamming his face into the edge of the shelf where the shaker was kept. He bled a bit, cried a bit, and grandma was also upset. His eyebrow now has a permanent "crack" in it.

One of his aunts has also picked him up by his upper arms (with his arms by his sides, not over his head) to...put him in a chair or something (don't remember) at her daughter's b'day party when he suddenly started screaming and squirming and nobody could figure out why until she realized she was still holding the Bic lighter she'd used to light her daughter's candles in her hand and was now pressing the still-hot lighter into his upper arm while she was holding him. That scar has faded to invisibility.

He has also been caught playing around on the bed in our bedroom (which he knows is off-limits) when he suddenly started screaming. He likes the glass beaded shade from the light on the bedside table, which has a candelabra-style 40W bulb underneath it, and since he had taken off the shade, the bulb was no longer covered. So while he was rolling around on the bed, his ankle came into contact with the bulb. He still has a scar on his ankle that's pointy on one end and looks a little like he's had a tiny little clothes iron pressed against his skin.

These things happen. So long as they're not fatal or disabling, they're part of the learning process. For kids and parents.

--Patrick
 
Top