Yesterday, we were getting ourselves ready to hit the mall before my cousin's graduation party. Leah was running around playing. I was almost finished getting everything together when I turned to see Leah trip and fall into our TV stand. She let out a loud cry and I immediately scooped her up in my arms. There was blood coming from her chin and the whole inside of her mouth was full of blood. I'm not going to lie, I kinda panicked myself. I laid her on the couch and got a wet rag to clean her up. She was still crying but had settled down a little bit. The cut on her chin looked pretty deep and it wouldn't stop bleeding. I gave her some water to rinse out her mouth. I think she must have bit her tongue or gums. We decided we should take her to Emergency Room to have it looked at. As soon as we told Leah we were going to the ER, she lost it and started crying harder pleading not to go. She said she was fine. We quickly got our things and headed out the door.
We went to the Edwards ER in Plainfield. It was a short drive and luckily it was pretty empty. We were brought back to a room right away. It was a kids room decorated with a Winnie the Pooh theme. The nurse turned on Spongebob for her, which made her happy. The nurse took off our bandaid to take a look. She cleaned it up a bit and put a new bandaid on. We needed to wait for the doctor to come in.
After a short time, the doctor came in. He said they would need to clean it further and put on an ointment to numb the area and make it stop bleeding. This ointment would need to sit on her chin for at least 20 minutes. Then he would be able to take a better look to see if she would need stitches or if he could just glue it.
After waiting, the doctor came back and took another look. He was debating what he should do. Glue would be the less painful/easier approach, but he was concerned it would bust open again. He told us if it was his child, he'd do stitches and that was his recommendation. I agreed, but was nervous how Leah would do. She had been doing great the whole time we were there. The doctor suggested having her lay on me to make her more comfortable. If that didn't work, they'd take her to another room and have to hold her down. I definitely didn't want to go that route.
Leah laid on me and asked me to hold her hand. The doctor asked her to close her eyes real tight and then he did the first stitch. She did awesome. She did get a little upset and tears were rolling down her face but she wasn't verbally crying
. It broke my heart. He told her to close her eyes again and she did. She opened them before she was supposed to and she could see what was going on. She was scared and cried out for me (even though I was holding her). I kept telling her how proud I was of her and that we were almost done. The doctor and nurse were great with her too. Three stitches later and we were done! The doctor said he has never seen a 3 year old do so good while getting stitches. Leah is such a rock star!
The nurse gave her a bunch of princess stickers and we were on our way. I need to bring her back on Thursday to get the stitches out. Hopefully they come out as easy as they went in. I'm so proud of my brave girl!!
