Humpty Dumpty's Valentine's Day Adventure

Ah, the "Firsts..." We've enjoyed and reveled in so many during this incredible journey so far but there are some "Firsts" you hope to never experience as a parent. Monday was one of those for us. Unfortunately, Olivia's First Valentine's Day also became her First Visit To The ER.

Before I get into the reason we spent the night in a hospital triage room instead of at home, celebrating all of the love in our family this year, I'll let you know that The Boss Lady is okay. Just didn't want you to be freaking out until the end of this one!

Our story starts several months back, before Olivia made her big debut into this world.

Like many expectant moms, I kept an eye on what my mom-friends were buying and using for their little ones in order to complete my own baby registry. One of the products I saw time and time again and had heard great reviews on is something called a Bumbo Chair (picture below just in case you aren't clear on what it is). The Bumbo Chair is this genius contraption that allows your sweet angel baby to sit up before they can actually sit up unassisted. It's great for that stage when they want to be up and looking around but they just can't support themselves yet.

I was thrilled 3 months ago when Olivia was finally ready to start using hers. She had reached the stage where she was very curious about everything going on around her and no longer wanted to lay on her back or belly. I excitedly got the Bumbo Chair out of its box and we used it non-stop. Whenever we were cooking dinner or breakfast, the Bumbo would go on the kitchen island, Olivia snuggly nestled in the seat, and we would go about our business. When we ate dinner, we would put the Bumbo on the table, put our Sweet Pea in the chair and eat dinner while we made faces at her. When she played on the floor, we would sit her in the genius chair and hand her toys to play with. Suffice it to say, the Bumbo was the greatest contraption we owned!

Last Thursday, my sweet girl surprised me by sitting up--without the Bumbo!! I knew she had been working on sitting up and I was so excited to find that she finally could! She can't actually sit herself up if she is laying down. But if you put her on the floor, sitting up, she'll sit like that for a while and play with the toys around her. I was thrilled when we reached this milestone!

She's also gotten to the stage where she wants to reach for EVERYTHING around her. It doesn't matter if she has 100 toys sitting right in front of her, if there is just 1 toy to be reached for, she will get her Go-Go-Gadget Arms going in order to reach the one toy.

On Monday morning, as I was getting packed up to go to work, I put Oli in her Bumbo on the kitchen island as usual. I watched as she reached for every single thing on the counter. She was getting good at getting to things that I thought I had placed well out of her reach. She would stretch her little arms and body as much as she could to grab the nearest object. "Wow, she's going to be able to jump right out of that Bumbo really soon," I thought. For you film and literature buffs, you'll recognize that as FORESHADOWING.

That afternoon, we got home at our usual time and I started on our usual routine. Bumbo Chair on the island, Olivia in the chair, me unpacking all of our bags, washing bottles, getting dinner prepped, oh, and since it was Valentine's Day, filling out Mike's Valentine's card.

I sat down at our bar, facing Olivia in her Bumbo, about 5 feet away. I was watching her reach around trying to get her little hands on anything on the countertop as I thought about how much love was in our home. I started to write a note in Mike's card, telling him how perfect our life was.

In less than a second, I saw a flash, looked up, saw the empty Bumbo Chair on the island, and heard my baby screaming. I leapt out of my chair and ran around the counter to find Olivia on her back, on the tile floor, screaming her head off. I immediately picked her up and began walking circles around the living room trying to soothe her and make my brain work. It felt like there was a freight train in my head, making too much noise for me to think straight. And Olivia was crying so loud and I was saying things like "Oh God, oh no, it's okay," over and over again.

I called our pediatrician's office to see if there was an emergency number but I couldn't hear the after hours message over Olivia's cries. I hung up, and called 911. All I remember telling the operator is "My baby fell." I felt like I was trapped in some horror movie. I couldn't breathe or talk and I had to sit down because my knees were shaking so bad.

Olivia started to calm down at that point and I nursed her as I was on the phone with the 911 operator. They were sending paramedics. Looking back, I think it's a little funny that I immediately felt the urge to nurse her. I'm not sure if I thought that breastmilk really can cure anything or if I was just trying to do the only thing I knew to soothe her. I do remember thinking that if she was able to nurse then she was going to be okay. Werid, I know. I then called a friend who had been through a similar situation once. She was able to stay calm and help me start thinking straight and she advised that I take Oli to a local childrens' hospital to get checked out.

After I hung up with her, I started to dial Mike to tell him what was going on. It was at that time, that I heard the garage door opening and the sirens. I ran out into the garage as Mike was pulling in. He got out of his car, looking behind him at the ambulance and firetruck that had just pulled in front of our home. I cannot imagine the fear he must have felt when he saw me running, Oli in my arms, tears streaming down my face, and yelling "Olivia fell!"

The craziest thing about this scene is the way Olivia was acting. At the time the paramedics and Mike arrived, only about 15 minutes had passed, but in that short time, my sweet girl had already forgotten her accident. As I was running outside, in total hysterics, she was in my arms looking at me with a puzzled expression. When she saw Mike, she broke out into her normal grin. She gave the paramedics her cute smile as well and everyone stopped and looked at me. "What happened?" they asked. "She fell!" I shouted. "When?" they asked. And that's when I looked at Olivia to see that she was acting just fine. It seemed strange to them, I'm sure, to see a woman completely freaking out about her child who seemed completely okay. They did do a quick exam on her though and assured me that the fact that she was conscious and acting like her normal self was a good sign but that we should take her in for a CT scan to rule out head injury.

After they left, Mike and I headed back into the house to get ready to go to the ER. We ran out of the house so quickly that we forgot her diaper bag. My sister and bro-in-law were staying the night with us because of burst pipe in their home and we even forgot to tell them that we were not going to be there when they arrived. We left most of the lights on and the front door unlocked as we sped out of our driveway. My sister called en route and we filled her in and told her we would call with updates.

During our 30 minute car ride, Mike rode in the back with Olivia and I insisted that he try to keep her awake. I was so scared that she would go to sleep and never wake up again. Who would have thought we'd ever be trying to keep our daughter AWAKE?!?!?

When we arrived at the ER, we were immediately put in a room and I told the story of Olivia's fall about a million times. Then, the person asking would look puzzled as they were smiled and squawked at by our sweet girl. Was this the baby that had fallen 3 feet onto a tile floor? Surely this child who seemed perfectly okay couldn't be the cause of this woman's hysterics?

As we sat in our room, waiting to see the doctor, I sobbed on and off, "I'm a horrible mother! How could this have happened?" Meanwhile, Olivia played as if she thought we were taking a really exciting family field trip. "What if she has brain damage!!!???" I cried to Mike. He spent most of the time, soothing me and pointing out that Olivia didn't seem to have a thing wrong with her. She was going to be fine, he assured me.

When the doc finally came in, he examined the goose egg that had developed on the right side of Oli's head and ordered a CT scan to rule out any bleeding or swelling of her brain. About 30 minutes later, he walked in, told us she had a hair line fracture in her skull, to be really careful with her head for the next month, and that we were free to go. WHAT?!?!?

I was in complete shock that we were being sent home with a child with a broken head and that it wasn't going to be a big deal at all!! Could they at least prescribe something for MY nerves??? The docs and nurses were so calm about this and acted like it wasn't that big of a deal. They were very nice but just so calm about something that had my nerves permanently frayed.

As it turns out, I'm not the only idiot parent out there who has dropped their child or done something goofy like sitting their child on the kitchen island where she could fall off and crack her head on the tile floor. The folks at the hospital didn't tell me that, but, the next day when I posted this event on Facebook and as we called family to tell them what happened, many shared with us their stories of very similar incidences. And I hate that others had to go through that, but hearing that I wasn't the only one did make me feel better. Yep, misery loves company.

I am still reeling from the events of Monday evening but my kiddo seems to have no memory that anything ever happened. The next day, we stayed home so I could rest and make sure she was really okay but she didn't seem to have a thing wrong with her. Even her bump disappeared within 24 hours. I still have flashbacks whenever I look at the Bumbo but she isn't phased by anything. She doesn't even favor the right side of her head when she sleeps or nurses.

Whenever something like this happens to me, I always try to see the lessons or morals of the event. I guess I just need to grasp the "why" of something in order to be at peace with it.

Here's what I've come up with for this circus act so far:

If it has a warning label on it, take heed. Because that means that some idiot before you did something to warrant that label. Don't try to learn the hard way. From here on, if one of these baby contraptions has a strap or a buckle, The Boss Lady is getting strapped in. If it has a warning label, we are going to follow it to a T.

Babies are so durable and resilient that it's easy to forget that they are still so fragile. I've gotten so used to having Oli in my life and she doesn't seem like a tiny, fragile baby to me. This event reminded me just how precious she is and how I cannot live in this world if she is not in it. I have never in my life been so scared as I was when this happened. I had to face the idea that something horrible might have happened to her and that she would not be here. I am feeling sick to my stomach just writing that. I am so thankful to God that I did not have to face the reality of that.

People said to us "Just wait until they get mobile. It's so much harder then." And I thought "Yeah right. Like this could get any harder." Wait, let me go get some ketchup for my crow. Gone are the days of just laying her down and finding her right where we left her. Olivia Anne is tough and determined and she wants to move. Soon, I'm afraid she'll be scaling furniture and I'll be having her fitted for a custom-made bubble wrap suit.

There is so much truth in that quote "Having a child is like having your heart go walking around outside your body forever." I cannot protect Olivia from everything and I cannot control everything that she is going to come into contact with. I am going to do everything I can to keep her safe but there are going to be times that something scary happens. It is terrifying to think that Monday might not be our last trip to the ER. But that's what happens when you have kids. You just do the very best you can to protect them and sometimes they still get hurt.

I am the luckiest woman on this planet to have a husband who is able to keep himself together so that I can fall apart. I'm sure this incident was scary for him too but he let me be the one to break down multiple times that night. He was strong and level headed and I have no idea how I would have made it through without him. I am also extremely lucky to have friends and family who will pray for me in my time of need and after. Friends and family who will share their own traumatic stories to help me feel more at ease. Friends and family who don't judge or say "What in the hell were you thinking putting that chair up on the kitchen island? Didn't you see the big RED WARNING LABEL?!?!?"

Yes, Olivia's First Valentine's Day was defnitely memorable for us and, as Mike says, "Oli, it probably won't be your last disappointing Valentine's Day." He's probably right. I just hope future disappointments are because her school crush didn't ask her to the dance and not because she cracked her skull.

I'm sure she'll call me someday with her own trauma with her own daugther and I'll tell her about this day and how the worry never stops when you are a mom. Right now, I'm watching her play in her Bumbo Chair (on the carpet!) and she's smiling and happy like nothing ever happened. Every morning this week, during our morning prayer, we've thanked God that Oli is okay and when I see her sweet smile when she wakes up, I know that I'll eventually get over the shock of this too.

Olivia in her Bumbo this morning

Yep, it has a warning lable that says "Prevent Falls: Never use on any elevated surface."