This weekend was our first trip to the ER. Our son tripped over a pile of unfolded clothes on the floor and hit his forehead on the bookshelf. There are few sights scarier than looking at your child with his face covered in blood. Needless to say the cut was fairly small, but just bad enough to require stitches.
There is one important thing to keep in mind, as a parent, when your child gets hurt, and that is to remain as calm as possible. Children react to your emotions, so freaking out will only make them freak out more. When he got hurt my son was pretty hysterical, which isn’t that uncommon for a three year old. But I was able to sit him on my lap with a washcloth over his injury while his father called to find out where to take him. As long as we were calm (singing songs and telling stories) he relaxed enough so that he wasn’t crying and we could get a pretty good look at the cut.
This being our first real injury, and on a Sunday, we weren’t exactly sure where to take him. It didn’t seem bad enough to necessitate the ER. So we first tried an Urgent Care center. I have to admit I learned my own lesson about staying calm while at the Urgent Care. These people seemed to have no idea how to handle an injured three year old. They thought they could just talk him into sitting still while they numbed his head and then sewed it up. They obviously had never met my son who hates even having lotion put on him. It was a complete disaster watching them try to hold him down (which is when I lost it) and eventually we ended up at the Pediatric ER where they handled it quickly and efficiently, although I’ll probably never forget the sight of his pleading eyes while the doctor put a needle through his skin.
I’m obviously hoping we don’t have to go through that again, but if we do I’m sure the ER will be our first stop, no matter how bad it seems. He is fine now and will have a pretty cool scar to show off for the rest of his life, but I for one still get a bit shaky when I think about how fragile these little bodies are.
