Today was supposed to be an easy, fun day with Ginny and the boys. Then Ginny’s doula client went into labor while Jesse had jury duty up in Ventura, so I offered to watch the boys while she went to the hospital. Then Susanna got up from her nap and decided to help herself to some apple while I was in the other room. I heard screams and saw a 3 year old running to me with blood dripping all over herself and the carpet. Tommy and Ben came running with wildly different stories about how it happened. Tommy got bandaids. Elizabeth quickly grabbed washcloths for me and helped mop up the blood all over the bathroom floor (the blood in the carpet is being a little more stubborn). Once we all stopped shouting and crying, Q explained to me that she wanted to cut her own apple up. After 10 minutes of bleeding (and screaming and crying as I tried to apply pressure), I started considering how to fit 6 children into a 7 passenger minivan with only 4 carseats. I gave Susie’s hand to Elizabeth to squeeze while I got Janie out of bed and called the doctor. The nurse at the pediatrician’s office told me they don’t do stitches there (why not?!), so I’d have to go to the ER if I couldn’t stop the bleeding. Taking 6 children to the ER seemed not much harder than what I was doing, but fortunately I went to check to see if urgent care was open (it was!) and noticed that Ginny had emailed me that her client had had the baby. I left her a message pleading her to come here quick and left another message for Derek pleading to leave work asap. As I loaded my four into the car, I noticed that the bleeding had finally calmed down, so we waited for Ginny to get here to reassess. She agreed that it looked like it would be hard to hold together, so she stayed with the rest of the kids until Derek got home while I took Susie back to urgent care.
The receptionist recognized us, and since I’d already filled out all our paperwork on Monday, we quickly got back in and cleaned up the cut. The doctor (the very pregnant wife of the doctor who glued Susie’s head back together) said we could do glue and immobilize her thumb for two days (yeah, right) or do stitches. As a mom herself, she recommended stitches. Both the doctor and the nurse were so sweet about pulling up Winnie the Pooh on the office computer and the doctor’s iphone so that little Q could be distracted. It didn’t work too well when she had to get the painkiller shot, but between the three of us, we managed to hold her down. She only screamed for a couple minutes and wept for a couple more. Once the thumb was numb, I held one hand and stuck the Pooh movie in front of her face while the nurse held down her other hand for the doctor to stitch up. It bled. A lot. Susie cried some more. But she got through it.
Three stitches and some surgical tape over it. We’ll need to cut out the stitches on Tuesday and keep the thumb clean and dry for 24 hours, but it should be okay.