Baby's First Stitches • Mamaguru

Ouch!

This is one entry I didn’t want to put in the baby book. Yesterday, five minutes after I dropped Max off at school, another mom called me to tell me that he had fallen, hit his head, and the school had called 911.

I had just enough time to turn to avoid the freeway entrance and redouble my route back to him. The most agonizing part was sitting at an ill-timed red light for six minutes, watching the fire engine flash its lights in front of his school. There was no cross traffic, making it even more pointless to sit there waiting. I considered running the light, but in my heart I knew he was being taken care of, so I practiced patience.

When I got to the school, Max’s face was covered in smeared blood. He had a gash on his forehead from hitting the pavement. Three paramedics assured me that his injury wasn’t serious: no concussion, maybe one stitch or a butterfly bandage, pediatrican could probably handle it, sign here, no charge for the call.

The school seemed very concerned with dismissing the incident as not serious. I didn’t perceive any concern for how Max was feeling. His teacher was filling out paperwork. No adult was sitting near him in the pint-sized chair.

I was not a crazy mom who needed to calm down. Although I was very upset and concerned, I handle crises very well. Always have.

Let’s just call them out. The Montessori School of North Miami handled this awfully. They seemed overly concerned with blaming Max for running and treating this like it was just a rite of passage, rather than negligence or at least something horrible that happened to him. They didn’t mention the fact that he tripped over the bumpy, broken pavement on their property. Max told me about that at the hospital.

The Hospital

I took him to Miami Children’s Hospital, where the staff was friendly and excellent. Although we were processed quickly, the wait for stitches took hours. Although they weren’t terribly busy, the hospital gets complicated cases, so like any ER, there is a wait.

The Child Life specialist gave us a very cool dinosaur pop-up book, toys, boardgames and a portable DVD player with Toy Story. She also explained all the steps for the stitches to Max using a Mickey Mouse toy. She gave Jack an Ipad with a kid app which kept him happily occupied while we focused on Max. She distracted Max during the procedure which enabled me to look away when he suddenly started bleeding a lot. It was creepy to see the amount of effort needed to poke through layers of skin, and I couldn’t help my eyes from welling with a few mama tears. Both boys received surprisingly nice toys at the end of our visit.

Max got 4 stitches: one internal and three external.

He is just fine.

It was a long day for me. All three of my boys had colluded to not let me sleep the night before by snoring, crawling into bed, and playing noisily. I was also hungry because I always eat my lunch after Max goes to school. Yesterday I ate at 7 am and 6:45 pm.

I took the boys to a diner near our home for dinner. A rare treat. They got silver dollar pancakes and smiles from a kind waitress.

It was an exciting day for them. Jack was thrilled to go to a hopisal for the first time, and found everything facsinating. Max was excited to know that four paramedics dropped what they were doing, ran to the fire truck, and turned on the lights to race to him when he got hurt. It is no exaggeration to say that both boys behaved like little angels the whole day. There was not even a moment of a tantrum, an argument, a whine, or a problem. I am happy that they handle crises as well as me.

It will serve them well.

After dinner we went home, washed faces and fingers, brushed teeth, and changed into jammies. No bath or stories. It was too late. We missed storytime at the library, a huge disappointment for Jack.

I kissed their tired little cheeks as I snuggled them into bed. They both smelled faintly of maple syrup. I guess we didn’t do a good job washing.

Oh well, I thought, I think we can all use sweet dreams tonight.