O's First ER Trip

Owen turned 10 months yesterday and celebrated with his first ER worthy injury. It all started during Colin's bath. Owen was happily awaiting his turn by standing next to the bath jumping and laughing at Colin. Somehow he slipped and fell and hit the back of his head on the toilet and his chin on the tub. Chris saw him bite his tongue and immediately scooped him up, handed him to me and ran to find gauze.

His tongue was bleeding profusely, but I knew the tongue would bleed a lot. But it kept bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. We called the pediatrician who told us if it bled for 20 minutes to take him to the ER.

Because managing both boys in the ER would be impossible, I went alone with Owen. It was a disaster. He was so happy to be around people that he was doing his one handed “hello!” salute, was babbling and making the “sssssss” sound at everyone. Which only made his tongue bleed worse. For 15 or 20 minutes, I stood with him in the waiting room, using paper towel after paper towel to clean him off.

When we finally saw the doctor, she told me it wasn’t a big enough cut to stitch up since they don’t like to suture the tongue. So she handed me a syringe to use to clean it out and we sat and waited to pay and get discharged.

The poor guy soaked his sheets with blood twice over the night, but woke up happy and NOT bleeding. Thank goodness. I never knew the tongue could bleed so much. I would post a picture of his wound, but that's just nasty. So instead here's a picture of a Owen today with his MOUTH CLOSED. Poor little guy.