Claire's First Hospital Visit

Claire had her first hospital visit last Friday.  She's made it longer than any of her sisters did, so I guess we'll call it a win.  

We had just finished eating lunch together.  Bert was off that day so he was with us and Claire had gotten up from her seat for something so after she crawled back in her booster seat Bert got up to push her chair back towards the table.  As he was scooting the chair in towards the table, Claire leaned forward and fell out of the chair and hit her chin on the side of Hannah's chair (wooden).  I didn't think too much of it at first.  Claire calmed down fairly quickly as Bert held her in his lap with a paper towel pressed to her chin. There really wasn't that much blood, and it wasn't bleeding at all after just 4 or 5 minutes.  

But then he pulled the paper towel away and we got a good look at it and were surprised at how deep and wide the cut was.  There really was a good gap.  I texted a picture of it to my mom (our resident medical adviser) and she thought it definitely needed a couple stitches.  I called our pediatrician's office and described it to them and they said that 2 of their 5 doctors do stitches but neither of them were working that day.  Sad. So, off the the children's hospital ER we went.  (After finding someone to keep our other kids, of course.)

Here we are waiting for the doctor to come in and see us.  She doesn't look like she's in that bad of shape does she?!

After the doctor came in he agreed that it definitely needed stitches and they put some numbing cream on it so that she wouldn't feel the actual procedure.  They left that cream on for about 45 min and before they came back in and got to work.  In the meantime, Bert got to practice some coloring while Claire supervised.

Bert held Claire in his lap while they put in the stitches and she did amazing.  There was a doctor, a 4th year medical student, a child life specialist, and both of us in the room while he was doing them. She didn't cry once.  The child life specialist did a great job of keeping her distracted and Bert and I enjoyed talking to the doctors.  We were thankful for the great care for our girl and we were in and out in less than 3 hours.  Not exactly how we had planned to spend our Friday afternoon, but we were thankful it wasn't worse.  

He ended up putting in 4 stitches.  Claire is quick to show off her stitches to anyone she sees.  She just throws her chin back and points to them and says "see!"  

Hopefully the scaring won't be bad.  I'm sure it will be better than it would have been without stitches. They are supposed to fall out on their own in 5 to 7 days.  

She's a bit accident prone at this stage.  Since the Friday accident she's fallen a couple times just running around outside and skinned her knees.  Every time I hold my breath until I see what she has "hurt."  I'm' trying to keep her from re-opening the stitches but it's easier said that done.  Wish me luck!:)