2.03.2010

the fall of baby

as opposed to the fall of man, this one was redeemed by a somewhat less costly sacrifice. here's how it all went down (as it were).

saturday night judah had a sleep-over with his grandaddy and gran-gram (the dukes').

smoochie boo's. the night before 'the indcident'

inverted survival training


taxiing on the runway


lift-off! (what comes next? a crash landing. not pictured)

as usual jesse and i used our newly found freedom to sit around around bored to tears and say back and forth, "what do you want to do?" being the spontaneous, crazy-in-love, young marrieds that we are we dashed home and got it on. and by "it" i mean "our house" and by "got" i mean "cleaned the ever living snot out of," and by "on" i mean "while watching olympic qualifying skiing, sweating, and making fun of each other." bow chicka wow wow. we actually ended up having an AMAZING double date with garrett and alyson later that night at FIGO followed by free yoforia which turned into a triple date when we popped in on lena and elliot.

pomegranate and pineapple yogurt with fruit topping! it was garrett and al's second free trip of the day (though the first one together, hahahahaha). in case you were wondering, neither me nor alyson had on knee-high boots.

well, sunday morning i woke up at 9:30 (insert choir of angels) and started getting ready to go meet linda and take just to church. then she called me and said, judah is fine, but he and bob had fallen down the stairs. honestly my heart didn't skip a beat, i didn't feel nauseous or worried or anything. a fatal flaw of mine, in addition to hubris, is that i worry myself stupid about stuff that doesn't matter, such as how many baby food coupons it is kosher to take from the dispenser (final answer: 24). it would appear that the flip side of that is that i don't care about the really big important stuff such as my son. awesome. submit mother of the year nominations to info (at) defacs (dot) gov.

the story is this: linda was taking a shower and bob was carrying judah downstairs. he thought he was at the bottom of the staircase already but really he had one more step to go. when he realized this, his bad knee from a college football injury gave out while he was trying to adjust and they went down. bob's poor ankle, knee and shoulder took most of the force but judah's little head snapped back and bonked on the hardwood floor.

honestly, he seemed fine. he had a goose egg (or punk-knot as my in-laws called it...whaaa??) but he never lost consciousness, he cried immediately and he didn't throw up. all good signs. when he took a nap that day we made sure that he would rouse when we bugged him...check there as well. if anything, he seemed smarter. when we were driving home from lunch, he spontaneously started clapping in the backseat to the rhythm of the music. it was am zing...he was getting such good SMACK out of the claps. i almost ran off the road with excitement. he's always loved watching us clap and giving people and mirrors 5's, but has never come close to figuring out how to clap with his own hands. he refuses to let us video this new talent.

slapping a reflection of your own hand is almost like clapping...but not quite. (red eye in the reflection...weird!)

then that night we came in the living room after feeding him and he was wearing his dinner. since we didn't see it (again, parents of the year!) we weren't sure if it was throw up or spit up (yes there's a difference. one involves abdominal heaving, and one just sort of tumbles out of the baby's mouth...fun facts!). an hour and a half later i was at the grocery store and jesse went to put judah down and give him his bottle. judah promptly vomited it all up on jesse. so we called the doctor and they said 2 instances of delayed vomiting hours after a head injury is not a good sign.
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and early valentine's present from judah...jewelry. your move, jesse.

so to the ER we went. jesse had a church responsibility he couldn't get out of so my mother in law met me and judah there at about 7. he got his blood pressure taken and a nice rectal temp (the old 478) and then we waited to be called back. despite the fact that he goes to bed at 6:30 most nights, judah was wide awake. he knew he was in a new place and needed to check it out. even though he was up hours past his bedtime, he never got fussy even once. he was so content to just soak it all up. the patient liaison came over and let us pick out a special hand-made teddy bear made by a local church. (i examined the craftsmanship with my sewer's eye, it is fantastic!).
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we decided this will be his owie-bear (cheese to the max). each time judah gets injured and has to go to the doctor or the hospital, we are going to write the date on the bear on the part of the body that he hurt. the bear will take away all the owies for judah in exchange for a treat after we get done! precious proxy. (i am hoping this bear stays BARE!)
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we saw the pediatrician and since judah fell from a height of 4 feet or higher (technically), had delayed vomiting over 5 hours after the injury, and still has a soft skull, he ordered a CT scan. jesse (who had since arrived) and i went back to the radiology room and then i realized that i want to have more kids and therefore should not be in the radioactive room getting my eggs fried. as the door was closing behind jesse, i saw them getting out a tiny little board with head straps to fasten my son down on. better that i wasn't in there to witness that particular milestone: baby's first restraints!

the scan came back all clear and we were allowed to go. it was 10:30 at this point and judah had finally passed out. it was a happy ending. the doctor said it was just a bump and worse case maybe a mild concussion. judah was so normal and happy after this happened that i think that's why i never got scared. i did feel awful for the poor guy because he can't catch a break. between getting bit and biting the dust, it was a rough week for him. even more incentive for him to learn to walk: so he can teach grandaddy how.
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at the hand-sanitizer station thinking that the sign is asking for a high five. HILARIOUS. he kept giving it 5 with no prompting from us.


thanks for everyone who freaked out on my behalf and who prayed for little dude's noggin. let's transfer those prayers over to the less resiliant grandaddy dukes, who is still hurting because he so selflessly took one for the team in a big, swollen, arthritic, achy way.

5 comments:

  1. Elliot told me about the fall at a GT career fair on Monday (small world, we both still have good careers in construction)... I'm so glad Judah's ok! And it sounds like you handled it really well :-)

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  2. yay! so glad that the bug is fine. thank you Jesus. let's hope Bob is doing better, too. i did the same thing on the stairs while luke was still in the womb. it was scary enough then!

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  3. Owie bear is a great idea!!! That's what I want for Madison's 2nd bday :)

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  4. That is a crazy week for an 8 month old. He needs to slow down. Glad he is ok.

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  5. My absolute HAPPIEST moment of the day was when the ped said his scan was 100% normal. Whoopee-now THAT was good news. THANK YOU JESUS, indeed!! My heart was in my throat (we definitely did not want to vie for the terrible grandparents award) although he REALLY did look and act too good to have anything wrong. Grandaddy is mending well, and the doc says he won't need surgery on that re-injured (about 14 times) knee. The good news about our amazing grandson helped tremendously!

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