January 4th 2011, the worst day of my life. I started off my morning doing up some dishes with baby sitting in her highchair just behind me watching mama work. I had just finished up and went to pull Buggito out of her highchair, in order to remove her from her chair you need to pull the tray off completely. I didn't want to put it down on the dirty floor so I turned around to place it on the counter top. Now this highchair has a safety belt and little miss should have been fine sitting there for the 2 seconds I turned my back.....but that was not the case. She had either managed to undo her belt under the tray when I wasn't looking or it had popped open when she leaned forward. However it happened doesn't matter, what happened next happened so fast I'm not sure how I could have intercepted it. I turned around to see her leaning forward to grab at her toes and as I reached my arm out to get her I watched her fall, as soon as the fall began~I screamed, and she landed flat on her little tummy right on the hard kitchen floors.
I rushed to her and scooped her up in my arms and she was quiet for a moment, sucking in the air required for the scream that followed. I had the highchair at its highest setting and for a baby her size it was a HUGE drop. I called up the stairs to Chris, "get your jacket we need to go to the emergency room". He came running down stairs and I began to bundle Buggito up in her snowsuit, she was bawling the entire time. We got into the car and drove up to the hospital. I was so scared she had bumped her head or perhaps broken her ribs or had internal bleeding of some sort. The nurse took us in right away and we waited for a doctor. The baby was so upset and so scared at this point she cried when the doctor came near her, he was able to determine her arms were okay but he had a hard time determining if her legs were hurt. He gave her some infant Tylenol to help with the pain and waited awhile for it to kick in before he came back.
When he did return he tried lightly pulling at her legs, but still couldn't figure out if they were injured or not. I told him she was able to stand on her legs when I held her and so we tried that, I noticed immediately she wouldn't put any weight on her right leg. He decided to send us over for a few x-rays of her leg and her torso. I snuggled her up and we walked over to the waiting area for x-rays, they had a rocking chair and I was able to rock her into a nice relaxed state. Once we made it to the x-ray room however that changed quickly. As soon as she was placed on the hard table and stripped down to her diaper she was screaming bloody murder. I had to hold her little legs and the technician held her arms above her head her little lips were trembling so her screams had a shudder to them. It was hard not to cry seeing how terrified she was and knowing I couldn't just scoop her up and make it stop for her right away.
When the x-ray was over we went back to a quiet room in the E.R to await our results, an hour or so later the doctor came in and said she had a buckle fracture on her right leg. He took us out to look at the x-ray, he decided the best course of action would be to splint her leg right away and have us wait for the pediatrician. We waited for what seemed like another hour and finally the pediatrician came in, he gave her an additional examination to ensure it was only the leg that had been affected, He told us that the babies major bone growth would take about 10 days to heal. We had to leave the splint on her and take her back to the orthopedic specialist in 3 days time for a check up. We were given the green light to go home where we spent our afternoon smothering Buggito with attention.
I was so worried child protective services would investigate us because we came into the hospital with an infant with a fractured leg, for a few weeks I was feeling uneasy and maybe a bit maniacal about keeping the house in order just in case someone came knocking on the door. But to my relief no one came, and a few friends and coworkers shared their stories of babies first accidents and it made me feel a bit better that I wasn't the only "horrible mother" who allowed her child to "get broken" on her watch. I had so much guilt for being so careless and allowing the baby to fall. Chris was my champion and kept telling me kids have accidents, they get hurt and that mistakes happen. He was so understanding, I'm glad if it had to happen it happened on my watch because I don't think I would have been as kind and good to him if the shoe was on the other foot. But I will remember how he comforted me on my screw up so when his turn comes I can support him in the same way.
We went back to the orthopedic specialist who said she seemed to be healing well, he gave us a new bandage and took the bottom part of her splint off. We had to come back in a weeks time to ensure it had healed properly. We went back the following Friday and lo and behold, the splint could come off and she seemed fine. We were initially worried it may delay her crawling and standing, but I think she managed to use her splinted leg as a kickstand to help herself crawl. She went from dragging herself on her belly to full on crawling in a matter of days of having the splint on. Once her leg healed the majority of the excitement for baby in January was that she weighed in at 23 lbs (the same size as a one year old!!!) and she got her top two lateral incisors so she looked a little bit like a little vampire for a few weeks.
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