Baby's First ER Visit

Oooh, artsy-fartsy blurry picture time!

Going 60 miles per hour in an area zoned for 30 is something I generally frown upon. Doing it around traffic is even worse and I don't recommend anybody do it, even if you're trained.

Now, I'm not saying I did that (because I have no idea if I can get a ticket for something I said on a blog if someone were feeling froggy enough to point it out to my local police) but yesterday as we rushed to the ER it's something I could conceivably have seen myself doing.

Yeah. The ER. Baby's first ER visit.

Of course this would happen during Laura's trip to DC for work training. Isn't that always the way of it? Things like this always happen while one of the parents are away, because life always works out just like a bad TV sitcom.

Lois is okay. She really is. We had an absolutely horrible night of sleep with her waking every hour but that was to be expected, from what the ER doctor told me and if a bad night's sleep is the worst of it then I'm happy to have had such a bad night of sleep.

She spilled the milk on the floor. Opened her cup up and just poured the entire cup of milk right out onto the hardwood-like flooring. I grabbed her away from it as I could see her contemplating playing in the milk puddle and we went to get some paper towels to clean it up.

We both wiped it up but it wasn't quite enough; the floor was still a little wet so I took the paper towels to throw them out in the kitchen and grabbed a couple more to finish up. I turned around and watched Lois jump into the wet section of the floor.

I was too far away.

Her feet went out from under her, up into the air, over her head. Her head. Her head went down below her body. It was the first thing to hit the hardwood-like flooring with a loud cracking noise, then the rest of her hit the floor.

Then silence.

Within a second I had her in my arms. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, her eyes were filled with tears. She was conscious. I looked her over. No blood. The scream became much less silent at this point and she started wailing louder than any banshee ever had.

And then stopped. She whimpered. Looked away. Her jaw went slack, her pupils went huge. Her eyes went glassy. I tried to get her attention and got no response.

I asked her if she wanted a cookie and she didn't even look at me.

We got in the car and that's when I either did or did not break just about every moving violation law in existence. The ER is a 20 minute drive from home without traffic. Interestingly it seems to be possible to make it a 15 minute drive during prime traffic time. I don't think an ambulance could have made better time (especially considering they'd have to have had gotten to the apartment first).

When I got her out of the car at the ER I knew she was going to be okay because she started talking and acknowledging the world around her. She had held my hand several times on the way there but now she was saying things like "Daddy, truck!" and "Hi man!"

We still went into the ER, though. We still saw the doctor. The doctor said she was fine, told me what to look out for, and sent me home with some discharge papers that essentially said "If she throws up, break the law and get here in 10 minutes, otherwise she's okay. Give her some children's motrin for the headache she WILL have."

Last night was a bad night of sleep with her getting up every hour. Every. Hour.

If that's the worst that comes of this, though, I'll take it. No question about that.