Wednesday 6 February 2013

Harry's First Trip to A&E

As there appears to be no page in Harry's baby book for 'My First Trip to A&E' or 'My First Serious Bump', I thought I'd better commemorate it here. Today was that day.

This morning we were sat at home with Harry going 'Mummy, what you got to tell me?' which translates to 'Mummy, what fabulous, fun and educational ideas do you have for activities today, that I will enjoy, relish and be enriched by?' and I just didn't have an answer. Luckily after a quick post on my birth board we had a play date with Harry's best bud lined up at one of the local soft plays - Splodges. It was our first visit, and it's a lovely place to go if you're local, it's small and best suited to younger ones I'd say with lots of toys suitable for under fives and a nice area for babies to play which Archie really appreciated.

Within 5 minutes Harry was up at the top of the soft play and wanted to go down the slide. Unfortunately this is a very fast slide, and god knows what happened, but he managed to bump himself on the head at the bottom. After a quick cuddle and kiss he jumped off and ran to play again. I can only guess that I was too quick to scoop him up and check him though as I totally missed that he had split the skin along his brow bone - the next time I saw him come around the corner I could see it was bleeding. The first aiders were on hand with a cold compress - but it you've even tried to hold a cold compress to the head of a 2 1/2 year old who feels absolutely fine and just wants to play with the cozy coupe then you'll know it's a pretty thankless task. I was persuaded that he was 'just fine' and off he ran to play. I, however, was a quivering wreck. Thank god for the friendly staff who settled me down with a cuppa and refused to let me pay.

Every time I saw him a felt the dreaded mum-guilt - what was I supposed to do? He was having a brilliant time, Archie was asleep and the thought of manhandling the two of them into the car filled me with horror. I have to say the idea of a long wait at A&E only to be told that he was fine wasn't exactly tempting either. However, in the end I did just let mummy-instinct take over and after a text to a friend who is a nurse I decided to get him lunch to go and head off to the hospital.

At the hospital I burst into tears, I felt so guilty I hadn't brought him as soon as it happened. But thank god for nurses, they were so, so lovely and assauged my guilt. At least we knew that Harry was acting completely normally and it wouldn't affect the healing process at all. Harry settled down to his takeaway lunch in the waiting room and before long a steristrip was adorning his eyebrow. He was an absolute angel whilst it was cleaned, and stayed nice and still whilst the strip was applied. And here he is enjoying the fromage frais that 5 minutes later was decorating the sofa *sigh*. A mummy's work is truly never done.



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