She must get it from her father because it didn't come from me. She has an innate need to climb anything taller than herself, just because she can. She laughs in the face of danger and eats fear for breakfast. She won't be two for another month but she has already performed death defying feats the likes of which a paratrooper would quiver at.
Bridget has no fear.
Friday morning while walking down the stairs ahead of her, she yelled "Amy!" and flew through the air from the top step. I caught all twenty eight pounds of her on the landing- after dropping a basket of laundry to quickly free up my hands. This calling me Amy thing is a bit irritating, but her skydiving sans parachute is a little more disconcerting.
By noon she had climbed on to a kitchen chair, and onto the table, thrown her airs in the air and jumped to the floor about 10 times before she finally had enough.
It's useless to try to stop her. It just makes her find higher things to climb. I hope she never learns fear and mounts Everest someday. Or does the things the rest of us can't find the moxy to do. I do hope she finds some common sense though, because some days of the week, she is just ridiculous.
Friday night I was exhausted. Keeping Miss Raggamuff in one piece is a very hard job. I was relaxing on the couch, with all of the family around me, marvelling at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. It was time to put Bridget to bed, but I was waiting anxiously to see who of the four chosen ones would be lighting the outdoor cauldron. Jamie and I had been discussing it for a week (because we are just that exciting).
Then it happens, I won the bet and The Great One takes off to run up the ramp to light the cauldron. I am watching as he takes off and then in the corner of my eye, I see a blond haired, blue eyed Squiddlefart flying through the air. This time she didn't jump though.
Her little Fisher Price chair had managed to tip over while she was squirming around, which launched her towards her little wooden tea party table. I am not sure it happened, but in my memory of the bang, I could swear the pictures on the wall shook.
Thank God she cried right away. But as Jamie grabbed her up, all I could see was gushing out of her face. Just for effect, Jamie was wearing a white shirt and we have beige carpet.
It was horrifying.
The sequence of events that I remember happening after that included me wetting a cloth with cold water in the kitchen and buckling her into the car seat, blood was coming from inside her mouth and not her nose, as I had previously thought. Jamie grabbed a bottle of milk from the fridge, my purse from the counter and Daniel grabbed her favourite Dora blanket, because she was in fact just wearing sleepers.
The drive to the hospital we pass every day, never ever took so long before. Bridget howling in the car seat, me beside her trying to hold her hand, rub her arm, talk to her, anything to make her feel better. She was not interested in being comforted; she was spitting blood and boogers faster than I could wipe it away. There was no way to apply pressure, there was so much blood I didn't even know what to put pressure on.
Pulling up in front of the hospital, I noticed that an ambulance had just pulled in. I realized then that even with all of the blood spouting from Bridget, chances were good; this was going to take a while. Inside a little girl whose mother spoke no English, sat miserable with a very high fever and a little boy cried that his bum hurt. I was ready to settle in, but not sure of what to do with all of the blood, and my hysterical toddler. Behind them, an entire waiting room of defeated looking patients waited for their turn.
Apparently blood gets quick service. A paramedic with kind eyes finished handing off his cardiac arrest patient and came to me with wipes, warmed for Bridget's comfort- to get some of the blood off. Jamie had just walked through the door from parking the car. He held her while I tried to clean up her up as best I could. The triage nurse weighed her quickly and sent us to registration.
Still bleeding and now just looking unbearably exhausted, Bridget settled on her father's lap while we waited our turn. I took a moment to breathe, perhaps for the first time since I heard the clunk. It was then I realized I was wearing a pair of black Capri yoga pants with a recently acquired bleach stain, a comfy shirt that has long been relegated to pyjama duty and I hadn't combed my hair or brushed my teeth since when I did it upon waking in the morning. I was not wearing a coat, but I was wearing sneakers, with no socks. Naked hairy legs sat in the waiting room, grateful that through the grace of God I was wearing a bra when it happened. The hairy legs were embarrassed to be out in public, but make no mistake; they knew things could have been much, much worse.
I wasn't expecting at all to see a doctor walking towards us, in the waiting room, not five minutes after we had sat down. I was ecstatic to know that he was looking for Bridget. I was less ecstatic to hear that 'if she was my child, I would want her asleep to stitch that up. It's a through and through- those can leave a nasty scar."
I thank God every day that my family is healthy. I can't imagine for a minute the terror a parent must feel when their baby is not well. Watching them put an IV in Bridget's arm was horrifying. I understand why they made us stay sitting. It takes a lot to stay conscious when your child is screaming hysterically because they are hurt and there isn't anything you can do to help them.
The room had been chaos while they inserted the IV. The nurse in pink had put it in, but when it came time to administer the anaesthetic, it wouldn't work. There were six staff members in the room, whether they were doctors or nurses, as well as, Jamie, Daniel, howling Bridget and I. Everyone was talking all at once, deciding what to do about the improperly set up IV. Everyone except a nurse named Luke. Who, while everyone else was holding a much unorganized summit on what to do next, slid silently, confidently next to the bed, and fixed it. He told us he didn't think would be fair to her if they took it out and put it in again, in a soft French accent. I suspect I spelled his name wrong, but I do know I am very grateful for his quiet confidence.
Her vomiting delayed the procedure. Vomiting while under anaesthetic can result in death. I knew this, because the doctor told us- and made us sign the papers. I started wondering if maybe a scar on the bottom right corner of her lip wasn't something she could live with. When she finally had thrown up the pint of blood she had swallowed in the last half hour, all over her father, she drifted off to sleep.
Everyone decided to back off for a few minutes- to let her calm down. It was better to wait a while and do it well than it was to rush now and not do a perfect job. I was still insistent that they had warned us about the vomiting, and she had vomited. I didn't care how long it took.
Peacefully asleep now, I watched her, blood seeping from the gash on her face. I said a hundred rounds of Now I Lay You Down to Sleeps with an intermittent Hail Mary. I had never been so scared. Why had I not put her to bed earlier? None of this would have happened. Why did we even have that stupid chair? Why was the chair stupid in the first place?
The pillow was covered in blood now. Clearly, she did need stitches.
An hour or so passed before they attempted it again. I was relieved that she was still asleep when they endeavoured to put her to sleep with the drugs. Luke informed me that the anaesthetic sometimes burns as it goes it, and it must have, because it woke her, causing her to scream out.
It didn't take long at all once they started. It only took two stitches to close the gaping hole in her face. They didn't do the pink part of her lip or the inside- just the part that might scar. Three hours sitting in the emergency room, to pay the price for not watching her for the blink of an eye.
We don't have the chair anymore. It's been relegated to the basement until I figure out what else to do with it. I don't want someone to think its ok to use and end up with an injured baby. It does tip ridiculously easily, though I never would have thought it. I'll be sending this to Fisher Price so they know what happened, and will hopefully reassess the design of the blue chair, with the cow face, that converts from an infant's seat to a toddler's chair. If you own one, I suggest you put it in your basement as well.
Bridget is fine today, two days later. The blue material protruding from her face is barely noticeable, and hopefully the resulting scar will be even less so. Of course, she can't have anything interesting to eat for a few days and she isn't keen on that, but she is otherwise healthy. For that I am extremely grateful. I know there are people for whole their ordeal is not so quickly ended. I am thankful that Bridget will be fine in a week, when the stitches are removed. Scar or no scar.
I need to run though- it appears as though she is trying to mount the kitchen counter. I have no doubt that she can do it, but this is one achievement I think we can do without. I suspect at this point I should be putting away a few dollars every month. I expect one of these days, we will need to sponsor an expedition to Everest, if she can take a few days off from skydiving.
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