Last night was our first and I hope last emergency room experience with Sophia. One of our friends gave us a toddler bed for Sophia to use once she gets old enough to try crawling out of her crib. I was showing it to her to see if she liked it. She was sitting on a cushion that I put on the frame. I went to slide the cushion down and she lost her balance and fell off the bed backwards and landed on her back with her left arm behind her. She landed on carpet and only fell about a foot, which she has done many times before, but this time when she got up she couldn't lift her arm and every time she tried she cried in pain. As long as she held her arm still and down to her side she was okay, but as active as she is, it's hard for her to do that for very long. Well, needless to say it happened right before she was supposed to go to bed and we spent the next six hours a the Children's Hospital Emergency room. We sat in the lobby for three hours where we were triaged and Sophia was given an ID bracelet.
When we were finally called back to a room, the doctor examined her and suspected something they call nursemaid's elbow or radial head subluxation. It means a dislocation of the elbow. He tried to maneuver her arm to pop it back in, but that didn't work so they took x-rays to rule out a fracture. The x-ray process was painful for all of us because Chris and I had to hold her still in painful positions while they took the pictures. She cried like I have never heard her cry before. By the time we got back to our room and the doctor came in to tell us that they might have seen a slight bit of swelling in her elbow but no break, her arm was almost fully functional. The weird positions that the x-ray tech put her in to get the pictures must have popped her elbow back in place. THANK GOODNESS! The doctor told us that very often this type of injury is resolved during the x-ray process because of the weird positions they have to place the arm in to get shots of each bone. By the time she was discharged she was fully using her arm again, grabbing for things, reaching for daddy or mommy and pushing herself up to sitting. For six straight hours she was crying in pain and just like that, she was better.
It was three o'clock in the morning before we got back home and baby fell asleep in her CRIB. It is now noon and she is still asleep from her crazy night. I can hear her shifting in there and I will go check on her in a few minutes, but for now, she needs her rest. Hopefully when she wakes up, today will be another day like any other: running, chasing, eating, napping, playing, loving.
