Not the Kind of Excitement I'm Looking For

Apparently Leo didn’t feel that my “31 for 21” posts should be as mundane as descriptions of Ellie’s shoes or the color of the living room walls.

He wanted me to regale you with tales of an emergency room visit.

Excuse me while I extract my heart from my throat. The good news is, he seems to be fine. If he was trying to make me appreciate him more than I already do (I guess he didn't read yesterday's post), it worked. It was unnecessary, but it worked.

It began benignly enough with the nightly bath. I took Ellie to her room to get dressed and read books and then settled in to nursing her (she’s back to nursing before bed for now). I heard a horrible thud, a house-shaking thud. I thought, what the? It couldn’t be…then, Erin calling for me. I dashed into the next room to find Leo sitting on the bed, crying, blood pouring from his mouth. At first we couldn’t even figure out where the blood was coming from but I was pretty sure he had bitten his lip or tongue.

Erin said he’d been playing/jumping on the bed (and our bed is tall, when they say deep pocket they aren’t kidding) when he just fell off. She said when he hit the floor he let out a scream and then held his breath which is what she thought then led him to pass out for about four seconds. She had to shake him to get him awake.

Good Lord, the drama!

To make a long story short, we mopped up the blood with a washcloth and consulted good old Spock who directed us to call the pediatrician. Since he’d lost consciousness, our doctor said we should probably take him to the ER.

My heart was pounding and my limbs felt like noodles from the adrenaline. Of course Leo thought it was great fun to put shoes on and get in the car and go for a drive with Mama at 9:30 pm (he even got to watch the in-car DVD, we figured it was the least we could do).

While they were at the hospital, I could not sit still. I did laundry (see, I knew I could get a mention of it in somehow) and paced around the house. I had, horrible, morbid thoughts and made Leo’s bed, tucking in the corners of his quilt, praying and willing for everything to be ok. I know, I know, he just fell off the bed, but if you could have heard that Thunk of his head hitting the hard wood. It was BAD.

At the hospital there was a cat scan, which came out normal, and a diagnosis of a concussion.

Erin and Leo arrived home shortly after midnight and soon after that an exhausted Leo passed out in our bed. I moved him into his bed around 2:30am. I fell asleep with Leo’s arm around me, a comforting end to a very stressful night.

Leo seemed fine this morning. I let him sleep in and he woke up in a good mood but starving, eating a breakfast fit for a lumber jack. Good appetite = OK, right? Since he got up late I took him to school myself, rather than having him catch the bus from daycare as usual. I was so grateful that everything seemed to be fine, I held him in my lap and read him books for a few minutes extra, rather than hurrying everyone into the car like most days. As he turned the pages, I rested my chin on his head, smelling his sweet hair.

That saying, “Hug your babies,” it’s corny but it’s so so true. It’s terrifying how something can just happen in an instant.

Please let this be the most exciting post I write for 31 for 21 because I may talk big, but I do not have the heart for this.