Scars

On Sunday evening, right before the children’s bedtime, the whole family was in Little Girl’s large room, playing. Baby Brother was toddling around holding a blanket and stepped on it, causing him to stumble and crash mouth-wards into the bed-frame.

There was screaming, blood, a totally split bottom lip, an emergency room visit, surgery under general anesthesia, and five stitches. Baby Brother was a trooper, though, even rallying to play “peekaboo” at 11 PM with the nurses on an empty stomach (no food or drink for six hours before surgery) with a big wound in his face. And they let us go home shortly after he left the recovery room, as he showed them how enthusiastically he could drink his milk and wet his diaper.

In recovery, receiving oxygen

Husband and I were with him for the entire ordeal except for about fifteen minutes while the surgery actually occurred (they had to have him unconscious for the stitches due to his young, wiggly age and the severity of his injuries). Thank goodness for Husband’s parents, who looked after Little Girl. We had been informed only one parent could be with him in the operating room while they put him under, but when the time came we were both there (I suspect it may have been because they knew his mother would want to be present, and they wanted to avoid any comprehension difficulties on my part: sometimes it pays to be an immigrant).

What a heart-rending experience, though, of your baby falling limp in your arms when the IV drugs get started, and then their taking his floppy body from you and putting it, alone, on that big bed, and ushering you away, you clutching the beloved bunny your baby always sleeps with, all covered in blood.

Later, a trip to the dentist provided the news that teeth had, indeed, shifted position, thanks to the blow (but are currently still stuck firmly into his head, at least.) Today he’s got a fat lip and thinks his stitches are weird, and has a new-found passion for his pacifier (he’s also getting molars), but otherwise is his usual busy self.

This makes Baby Brother’s second facial scar already, at only sixteen months. He was cut on his cheek by a scalpel on the occasion of his birth by c-section, in the operating room right next-door to where he got these stitches. My first sight of him was marred by the sheet of blood covering his cheek. Nowadays I am only the person who can even really see that scar and be bothered by it, but of course I’m his mother.

One day old; the cut is on his right cheek, near the ear

Poor baby. Let’s hope he’s now used up his lifetime supply of bad luck.

About these ads