First ER-Worthy Injury

In almost seven years, with four kids, I have only made three trips to the emergency room. The first of these was with a six-week old Meg who was spitting up a lot of blood. (Turned out all of the reflux stomach acid had torn up her little esophagus.) The second was for Esme, who developed some funky symptoms on a weekend, when our pediatrician's office was closed. (Turned out to be nothing but a standard cold.) The third was for Graham, just two nights ago.

Dave and I were supposed to go to a meeting, but we'd had to cancel it last minute because so few people were able to attend. Since my mom was still willing to come babysit, we decided to head out for a last-minute date instead. So we were upstairs, Dave getting Graham ready for bed, me trying to change my clothes from my daily frump into something more dateish. Dave left the room to grab some diapers. Graham was crawling around on our bed, and there was something he wanted on my bedside table. He kept planting one hand against the table while streeeeetching his other arm to reach whatever it was. I had already moved him back to the center of the bed once, maybe twice. As I watched him reach again, I said, "Buddy, you're going to hurt yourself..." (If I had known how right I was, maybe I would have been a little smarter.)

BAM, he was down. His knees slipped out from under him and his forehead met the sharp edge of the table. I lifted him up and glimpsed a deep gash above his eye. Immediately blood started to stream down his face. I called out for Dave--he rushed in--we scrounged for paper towels and cotton to stop the bleeding. None of our kids had ever had a cut like this before. I didn't know whether or not it needed stitches, but I knew we should at least have it checked. So now it was Plan C. No meeting, no date... how about Emergency Care for a night of fun and romance?

Fortunately (fast forward past all of the hanging out in various waiting rooms), no stitches were required, though one of the triage nurses made our hearts sink temporarily with her cheerful, "Let's get this guy sewn up!" But because the cut was so clean, the outstanding RN who saw us in our exam room was able to close it up with Dermabond. Have you seen this stuff? It's a little purple tube of skin-glue. Pretty amazing stuff. Graham was angelic about the whole thing, despite being kept up hours past his bedtime. He held perfectly still for the staff, and never so much as flinched or whimpered as they glued him back together again.

A few pics of our brave boy the morning after... isn't he so adorably Gerber?

My attempts at getting a close-up of his wound:

So that's the story of our first injury-related trip to the ER. But with two typically energetic boys and two extremely active girls to boot, I can only assume that it won't be our last.