"I'm okay dad!" and jumped back into the shower. It wasn't until a few seconds later when Scott walked over to peak at him through the shower door that he realized he was bleeding from the head. :)
We are no strangers to stitches. Every one of the five boys has 
had them now. The older three when they were little; before my time. My first experience was more nerve racking then this. Poor Noah had just turned 1 and was barely walking when Christian decided to push him from behind into the TV stand. He hit his eye on the corner of the table and split his eyebrow verically. That required 3 stitches to his little face two days before Halloween. If I hadn't already had a Tigger costume for him, I would have considered Frankenstein. :)
I had just left the house last night for a quick run to the mall, and hadn't even gotten half way through the parking lot when my phone rang and Scott was telling me I'd better come back home because Christian probably needed stitches. Scott had just put the boys into the shower together in our master bath and had walked into the bedroom to answer the phone when Christian decided he wanted to get out of the shower and turn on the track lighting above the shower for more light. He had made it to the light switch, but on his way back to the shower he slipped on the floor and fell flat on his face. As I mentioned above, it didn't phase him and wasn't until Scott walked over to see if he was okay back in the shower that he noticed he had split his eye, below the brow.
I actually debated on whether or not to take him in. It really didn't look that bad and wasn't bleeding by the time I got back home. I thought maybe we could just butterfly it up. I thought for sure it was too low on his eye for stitches. It is more on the eye lid then the eye brow, but after consulting with our nurse neighbor, who offered us liquid band-aid's, we figured it would take as much energy trying to hold him down to apply the liquid band-aid as it would to just hop in the car and take him to Urgent Care.
I explained to him what was going on.
Me: "We need to go to the Doctor's office so he can look at your owie.
Christian: "I slipped mom and got hurt. The Doctor will fix it?"
Me: "Yep, he'll fix it and it will be all better and you'll be a brave and good boy for him, okay?"
Christian: "Okay mom. He'll put a band-aid on? Can I bring him a BackYardigan Band-aid?"
Of course. So with our bright backyardigan band-aid in hand, He and I headed off to Urgent Care...us and every other kid in town it seemed like. :)
The place was packed. Mostly with sick babies, but there was one other girl who's fate had proved to be similar to Christian's. Not sure what exactly had happened to her, but she was sitting in the waiting room holding a towel to her chin. She came back out later, stiched and bandaged and off on her way.
Our entire stay lasted about two and a half hours. Much longer then I remember when we went to Clarkson West for Noah's incident. There we got in right away and he was papoosed (sp?) and numbed with a shot and stitched up in no time. He also screamed bloody murder the entire time he was there. Not because it hurt, but from being held down and then having a cloth placed over his head with just an opening over his wound so they could stitch it. Being only a year old I'm sure he was scared to death. He couldn't have understood what was going on, but was perfectly fine once he was freed from his bindings and handed off to us. Big smile on his face.
At Urgent Care there were no shots to the face to numb the area, which was a good thing. I was dreading that the most. At three years old, Christian is well aware of what's going on and I didn't want to have to tell him that he was being held down to get a shot to the face. In this case the nurses apply this gel to a cotton ball and they tape it to the wound and it does the numbing. I'm convinced that that has to be one of the best inventions ever. Only bad thing about it is that it takes longer to numb, and you have to apply it more then once to make sure it works properly, so that accounted for alot of our waiting around. We got called back to do his weight and check his temp, then sent back out to the waiting room to wait. They called us back again, this time to apply the first round of gel to numb. It took a little coaxing and finally a firm "push" to get Christian to lay down long enough for the nurse to apply the cotton ball with gel and tape it to his face, and then we were set back out to wait some more.
When they finally called us back again, we were pushing an hour and a half since we first arrived. We were taken this time to what I like to call the "operating room'. Where they actually do the stitching, and unlike the other friendly little rooms in the pedi office, this looks like the ER. Christian of course wanted to look in every drawer and touch every thing in the room. We finally got him to sit on the bed so the nurse could apply another round of gel. This time she brought back-up with her. Another nurse to help coax him into laying down so she could change the cotton. That went pretty well and then once again we were left to wait, this time in the room.
Good thing they had a TV. Bad thing is they were playing a DVD of Madagascar. We own the movie and the boys have probably watched it non-stop for the last three weeks. I was not happy to see that movie again and couldn't help thinking that instead of being at the Dr's office watching a cartoon about animals stranded on an island, I should be home watching the show I wait all week to see about people stranded on an island...and I'm not talking Survivor. :)
Our wait in this room wasn't nearly as long and when the nurse returned with the Dr finally, I have to admit my stomach was starting to flip. I was very nervous about how Christian was going to react and a part of me couldn't help but wonder if this numbing gel was really going to work. I thought for sure he would freak when they pulled out the papoose, but he allowed them to lay him down and strap him in with no problem. Probably because he could still see the TV and was engrossed in his movie. It took him a minute to realize that he was strapped down and couldn't move and that's when a bit of panic started to set in; for both of us. He kind of gave me a look like "What's the deal here, mom." and I reasured him he was being a very brave boy and all was going okay, but that didn't stop him from crying a bit and yelling a bit too.
"I gotta get out of here mom! I have to pee! I have to go home! Don't touch me! Stop touching me! I don't want to talk to you!"
He didn't feel a thing, but I think the fact that the nurse had to sit at his head and hold it steady for the Dr. freaked him out a bit. That coupled with the fact that he couldn't move his body just set him off a bit, as it would any kid. But he toughed it out and four stitches later, he was thanking the Dr. for helping him and even presented him with his Backyardigan Band-aid that he hadn't forgotten about.
So far so good. He didn't complain about any pain the rest of the night or this morning. He had a fresh band-aid on his eye this morning. A more neutral band-aid today as it's picure day at school, of course. :) And he even allowed me to take a few pictures of his "owie" today...I may need them for his scrapbook someday. He keeps telling me that he's sorry he slipped and fell, which I've reassured him is not his fault and that he doesn't need to be sorry. Mommy and Daddy are just glad he's okay.
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