How a day at a city fair started with lollypops and ended up at the emergency room.
I wonder if every mother can recall such days. Probably yes. It was Monday. The night before we had come back from a vacation. The fridge was empty and my husband had immediately flown off on a business trip. To make my life even more spicy the kindergarten closed at noon on that day due to a large fair in our town. So there was no going to work for me at all.
First tantrum after a ten meters
I decided to make the best of it and spend the day with the kids at the fair instead of going mad at home. So I picked them up from the kindergarten and headed downtown. After ten meters my eldest (4 years old) stumbled over something and broke down on the ground screaming that she couldn’t walk anymore. After some consideration I took the youngest (2 years old) out of the stroller, put the eldest in the stroller and we marched on.
The second one a hundred meters further down the road
After a hundred more meters the youngest started crying that she didn’t want to walk anymore and claimed that it was her stroller. To make her protest more impressive she simply lay down on the ground and announced that she would stay there. This move was not completely unknown to me, so I just kept on walking. Sure enough she jumped up and ran after me.
I earned that glass of wine!
After a tasty lunch consisting mainly of lollypops and ice everything was well again. The foot didn’t hurt anymore and my youngest could make herself comfortable in “her” stroller. We took a long walk in the park waiting for her to fall asleep, interrupted only by an urgent search for a concealed place (“Mum, I need to poo”). As soon as the youngest was asleep we took a seat in a lovely garden restaurant and I ordered my well deserved glass of wine. I was already starting to feel a little bit out of breath.
Blood running down her face
We managed to get home without any more accidents and tantrums and I decided that I had also earned a yoga session. While I was stretching in the downward dog the youngest suddenly started to cry loudly. First, I didn’t even look up. But after she had turned to face me, I jumped up after all. Her face was covered in blood, streaming from a two-centimeters long laceration on her forehead. Apparently she had stumbled against the door edge while fighting with the eldest about who got to go through that door first.
Driving with my hands shaking
Suppressing the urge to panic, I took her in my lap, took a picture of her and sent it to my husband, asking what I should do now. Of course, he didn’t reply immediately. Somehow I managed to wipe off the blood, put a patch over the wound and say to myself: “It’s okay. These things happen. We simply go to the emergency room, they put stitches on it and that’s it.”
No help from the dad
With an incredibly calm voice I made the kids climb into the car. The I got rid of a neighbour who started telling me how her kid had to spend three weeks at the hospital once and got in the car myself. There I noticed that my calm was only superficial because my hands were shaking. That glass of wine didn’t make my driving abilities better either, but I had no choice. As we drove off I received a message from my husband (who was sitting in a cosy pub with his coworkers by then) saying that I should probably go to the emergency room. And why on earth did I drink alcohol when I was alone with the kids?!
The only helpful advice would have been to call the ambulance instead of driving myself. Because when we arrived at the emergency unit we were told to wait because ambulances kept coming in from the damn fair and ambulances are always treated with priority. Two years old kids with lacerals obviously not.
Four hours to get to know every corner of the hospital
The emergency unit did not look like in “Chicago med” where doctors were running around saving lives every ten minutes. The only ones running around among two dozens waiting emergency patients were my kids. The laceration didn’t seem to hurt anymore, so the girls soon got bored with sitting around listening to me reading books in the child’s corner. So they started chasing one another along the long hallways, climbing the handrails of the stairs and running outside risking being rolled over by the ambulances that kept coming in.
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After three (three!) hours we were called in by the doctor. She put some painkiller ointment on the cut, said it needed half an hour to take effect and sent us outside again. To prevent the kids from running around (which didn’t bother anyone from the personnel, only the exasperated mother) I took them to the vending machine. There would be no dinner tonight anyway I reckoned.
She wouldn’t be bribed with a teddy bear
An hour later we were called in for the second time. By then the effect of the painkiller had already worn off judging by the screams of my daughter (“Mommy! Moooomy!”) when the doctor made the stitches. My job was to hold her head to prevent her from moving. After the whole procedure, which took only five minutes (thank god), the doctor tried to press a teddy bear into my daughter’s lap. She didn’t even look at it, turning away in disdain.
I don’t even remember how we got home. I only know that I didn’t go to work that week at all because I wanted to keep an eye on my two year old stuntgirl. The stitches needed to be checked every day by a doctor anyway. Of course, our pediatrist was on vacation so we had to see his substitute who was crowded with patients etc. etc. etc.
More cuts, bruises and broken teeth to come
The wound healed well and made me quite immune to all the other cuts, bruises, wounds and broken teeth that were to come in the next years. Even if my daughter sometimes looked like a warrior coming home from a battlefield her childhood was never boring. My motherhood neither. And now I always consider calling an ambulance before getting into the car myself.
P.S. This was definitely the worst emergency we had. Bur even smaller accidents can make a mother’s day adventurous, especially on a camping trip.
P.P.S.: Parents absolutely need to take good care of themselves to survive such days. That’s why I talk about it in my online course. Check it out!