Gash.

So, yesterday was pretty much the scariest mommy day thus far.

The short version: We spent 4 hours at the ER, and Raiden has 10 stitches in his forehead.

The long version: I got a call from MIL at 10:something yesterday morning with Raiden crying in the background. She said he was running, "and I told him to slow down, and he didn't," and he tripped and fell and hit his head on FIL's gun cabinet. (Side note, he's been wanting to move the guns to a gun safe and take down the cabinet, anyway, before Raiden gets big enough to know what they are and get interested in touching them. Even though it's locked, he just doesn't want them around him. Good call. But this really has nothing to do with Raiden falling into it.) MIL said she thought I ought to come look at it, so I grabbed my stuff, told my coworkers what was up, grabbed Rich, and took off. Rich called his mom on the way,  we ended up meeting her at Urgent Care, and OMG, Rich is actually a little mad that she didn't just take him first thing. I can agree with him, though I can also totally understand wanting to calm him down and stop the blood before trying to wrestle a screaming bleeding baby into a car seat by herself. Luckily Urgent Care is only about 1 block from her house, so not much time was wasted, anyway. But yes, we met her there and as I said, OMG. He had a GASH in his head that was 1.5" long and a good 1/4" deep. It was AWFUL and I felt weak just seeing that in my BABY'S head. But he? Was happy. Drinking milk. "Hi mama. Hurt!" He freaked out more when they tried to put gauze and tape on his head, than he was freaking out about the GASH in his head hurting.

The receptionist and a nurse, I think, at Urgent Care said that with how deep it was and how much he was fighting them, they weren't equipped to possibly sedate him if needed and that we had to go to the ER. (I'm wondering in the back of my mind if we'll still get charged with an Urgent Care visit even though we never left the waiting room and just got gauze, tape and ice. The ice, by the way, was pointless, because the gauze was an inch thick.) The car ride there? He was pointing to his head saying "hurt," telling me that Daddy was wearing sunglasses, that I was wearing a coat, and all kinds of normal things that a baby with a gash in his head would not be expected to do. Acting totally like himself. I seriously couldn't believe it and kept telling him how proud I was of him being such a brave boy.

The drive from Urgent Care to the ER too approximately seven years. We had to wait a few more minutes at the ER before being called back to take information and try to check his vitals, which he also freaked out about. We waited a few more minutes before seeing a nurse practitioner, who said that as feisty as he was we may have to do a "conscious sedation" to get the stitches done, which meant being transferred to another area to see another doctor and having another series of waits before officially deciding anything. The trauma doctor made the sedation sound like a much bigger deal than the nurse practitioner had, and made it sound much more possible to just have nurses wrap him up and hold him without bothering to sedate him. In the end, we decided that a local anesthetic and 10 minutes of screaming would be healthier than medical sedation knocking him into lala land and waiting for that to kick in and then wear off and hope that he didn't have a reaction to it. (And now I wonder, if we'd decided that in the first place, if we could've just done it with the nurse practitioner instead of having to be transferred.) I was holding it together on the outside but kept getting light headed due to freaking out internally about it, especially once they took the gauze off his head and the gash was right there in plain sight, and the light headedness was not making me happy. Rich and I decided that it would probably be better overall if he and I were to step out while they did the stitches, so that I wouldn't pass out watching it. We gave him hugs and kisses and told him, "We'll be right back!" while he was reaching for us, and left him with strangers to bundle up his little toddler body and hold him still to do the stitches. I had to walk away where I couldn't hear him, and cried for a few minutes over hearing him yelling "Mama! Mama!" while I was walking out the door and away from the room. Rich went over to check after 9 minutes (not that I was obsessively watching the clock or anything) and heard him yelling. He wasn't screaming much at all, he was simply saying to them, "Mama! Dada! All done! Alllllll done!" which, after they were finished, the nurses confirmed and seemed to find amusing. Immediately after they were done, he was perfectly fine. Definitely the correct decision to not do the sedation.

They took a couple of x-rays, which he was not happy about, either, and then waited an hour and a half (watching cartoons, walking the halls, drinking orange Gatorade) for them to be reviewed; they were perfectly clear. The doctor wasn't even concerned about him napping or sleeping at night. We finally got to leave after 4 total hours in the ER, lots of cartoons, and 10 stitches in my baby's head. 

We got take-out on the way home because we were ALL starving, and Raiden took a very late nap right after he ate. He slept for about 3 hours, but a lot of it was broken; the cut was finally starting to hurt him, it seemed. He would yell for me occasionally, but didn't seem to really be awake while he was doing it. I laid with him for a good portion of the nap, and that seemed to help. He woke up happy, though, and went to bed easily (albeit, late) at night as well. I fell asleep with him, which I was okay with :), and when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't fall back asleep, I was perfectly content to just lay with him, listen to him breathe and feel him squirm. I was even okay with his feet digging into my side.

MIL kept apologizing, but it wasn't her fault. He's a little boy, he runs, and he falls, and this time he just hit something just right on his way down to cause a good sized gash that needed stitches. The only thing that bothered us was that she thought we needed to look at that GASH before taking him to the ER, but on a good note, we got this out of the way early so now if something really serious ever happens, we have a "we'll meet you at Urgent Care" protocol. 

Rich stayed home with him today, but Raiden is really doing well enough I felt okay coming on into work. He was trying to be a daredevil this morning, and seems confused with us telling him to walk instead of run, and not to sit on his kick ball so close to the door frame. Our parental eyes can only see sharp corners, hard surfaces and trip hazards right now. (Rich wants to get Raiden a pillow suit for a few days.) We explained to Raiden that he just needs to be very careful for a few days until his owwie starts to heal, and then things can go back to normal. He pointed to his head and seemed to understand, but he gets excited and forgets. And then we have heart attacks :).

It's a really clean cut, though, and I don't expect there to be much of a scar in the long run. My mom informed me that this won't be my last trip to the ER for stitches, and my boss said a very similar, "At least you got that first ER trip out of the way." Really, it could have been a lot worse. I'm just so proud of my brave little boy being. I think he did better yesterday than I would have.

Added later:

Blurry fonecampic from lunch today.

Ow.