A first of hopefully not many...

Late Monday afternoon, Isaac had another first... Not his first boo-boo ever - he's already had several bumps and bruises because he's such and active little boy - but his first boo-boo that required a visit to the Emergency Room.

It all started as I was talking to my mom on the phone, and Isaac was cruising the furniture as usual. Suddenly he lost his footing and slipped in an unusual fashion, hitting his face on one of our end tables. I had been standing right over him, so I scooped him up, and immediately threw the phone down. I screamed out to my mom because I saw blood spewing from his mouth. I thought he had knocked a tooth out! Thankfully it wasn't his tooth, but, after a great effort to stop the bleeding, I was able to see that he'd suffered a blow to his lower lip and there was a pretty good sized wound. Since there was so much bleeding and the wound was gaping open, I called Isaac's pediatrician. While I was waiting on a call back from the nurse-on-call (it was after hours), Steven's sister, Michelle, called. I told her what had happened and asked her what I should do. She said I'd need to apply a cold compress to the wound to help reduce the bleeding. Thank God for a wonderful, knowledgeable sister-in-law to call at just the right moment! I did just that, and it did help th bleeding subside. A couple minutes later, I got a call back from the pediatrician's office. The nurse-on-call told me to give Isaac some Advil and put ice on the wound and then she said, "You'll need to take him to the ER or the Urgent Care to see if he'll need stitches." I seriously thought she was joking. I asked for her to repeat herself! She said, "Yep, the ER."

By this time, it was 5:30 PM and my mom, who had heard everything on the phone, was on her way to our house. I called Steven to let him know that we'd be cancelling our plans for the evening and going to the Urgent Care instead. Once he got home, we went to the Urgent Care in our neighborhood. They saw us pretty quickly (we felt special!), but they said that since the cut was on both the lip and facial skin, they'd have to send us to the hospital. So we left, after getting a refund of our copay (YEAH! Thank you Lord!), and headed to Levine Children's Hospital.

Once we got to the Children's Emergency Room (at 8:00 PM), we signed in and were told to wait. There was definitely no sense of urgency there! We were called back to the triage unit around 8:30, and they determined that Isaac did need a couple stitches, but they had a window of 12 hours from the incident before the stitches had to be in place, so they put us on low priority. Apparently all the families in the waiting room were on low priority because we were all still there three hours later. A little after midnight we were finally called back and given a room. Close to 1:00 AM we saw a doctor and she told us that she'd put some numbing cream on Isaac's wound and we'd need to wait anothr 30-45 minutes for the cream to take effect. (NOTE: They usually do not use numbing cream for toddlers like Isaac because they are so active and will wipe it off or lick it off. However, since it was the middle of the night and Isaac was zonked out, they were able to use it on him instead of a shot of numbing solution! Another thanks to the Lord!)

Around 2:00 AM, it was time for the stitches to be put in. We handed Isaac over to the doctor and left the room. We went to the waiting room to pray, and within 3-4 minutes we were called back. Isaac was not too happy about the stitches, but he, yet again, showed us what a strong little boy he is. He calmed down when we held him and then I nursed him a little bit before we headed home. We all got in bed around 3:00 AM this morning.

Here are some pictures from our experience:

Shortly after the accident:


Isaac sleeping in Steven's arms in the waiting room:


Once we got in our room:


After the stitches:


Whew. What a long night, but our little one is now all stitched up and back to his happy, playful self! What an interesting and insightful experience for us all! As they say, "Boys will be boys." If I heard this once, I heard it a million times yesterday - "Oh honey, this is only the first of many times like this! You have a boy. Get used to it!" :)