Ethan at the hospital, he's actually laughing in these pictures because Uncle Jake was tickling him!
Last Friday I was planning on writing a little post about how Jack was a month old. The time has flown by, and I have loved having him here and wanted to celebrate that! Firstly though, I had planned a little trip to Cherry Hill with Ethan, so we could have some mommy and son time. While we were there a series of unfortunate events occurred that derailed the whole day, the whole week actually, and gave me one of the worst days of my life (and what I'm sure has been the wort day of Ethan's).
We dropped Jack off at my mom's and headed over to Cherry Hill for a day of swimming and snow cones. The trip started out great! We played in Pirate's Cove, shared a tube on the lazy river (something we have not been able to do before on account of my giant pregnant belly and something Ethan thought was extremely fun), and were starting to wind down and get ready for the snow cone Ethan had been coveting all day. As we were walking back up to our stuff to leave, Ethan wanted to go into the pirate ship for a minute, so we did. We've played in there plenty of times and the treasure chest is one of Ethan's favorite things. We went in and sat on a bench while we patiently waited for some other kids to move away from the said chest. When they had Ethan climbed down and happily said, "Mommy, you want to look at treasure?" I remember this moment very vividly because as he stepped towards the chest he slipped on the wet floor and landed face first into the corner of the chest. Well, as you can see from the pictures, it was quite a hard fall. I scooped him into my arms immediately and left the boat, as blood gushed from his mouth. The next few minutes were a blur, but I know I called PJ hysterical and told him to get Jack because I had to take Ethan to the hospital. I somehow ended up in the break room, with multiple bags of ice that Ethan would not allow us to put on his mouth, and EMT workers some other parent who had witnessed the accident had called for me. I held Ethan in my arms as they cleaned and examined his wound, both of us sobbing uncontrollably all the while. Many sympathetic mothers who had followed me in there (0ne who even carried all of my stuff in there for me) consoled me with phrases like, "it's not as bad as it looks,", and "he's lucky, it could have been worse." The EMT's confirmed this by saying he would need stitched, but he was okay. We also discovered, while in that room, that one of his teeth was missing. Cherry Hill workers went back to the pirate ship to scour the room for his tooth, but did not find anything.
The EMT's said they would not need to take him to the hospital in the ambulance, and we could drive him there ourselves, but also said that I, in no uncertain terms, was absolutely not to drive him because I was in a state of shock myself.
Meanwhile, PJ has rushed to my parents to get Jack, and is pretty stressed out by the lack of information my hysterical phone call gave him. I called him back and had an EMT talk to him. He calmly came and picked me up. My brother Jake followed, so that he could give me a ride home at any time if I needed to go feed Jack. We ended up at North Davis hospital. ON the way there Ethan acted completely happy. PJ took a picture of him and he smiled and said "cheese!" He also waved at Jake and me and we passed him in Jake's truck, and he said hi to buses when he saw them. Seeing him so relaxed helped eased my concerns a lot.
The hospital visit was awful, but unfortunately necessary. Ethan was such a good boy and was totally happy and content while we were waiting for the facial reconstruction surgeon. The visit was made a lot easier thanks to his Uncle Jake who played games with him and kept his mind off the pain. The worst part was when they put his IV in. They had like five people holding him down, and they couldn't get it in. They poked each arm a few times and were digging around in it with a needle. Ethan cried and screamed, I bawled, and it took everything PJ had not to chew out the nurse. After a minute, they restrained him with bedsheets and stuck it in his foot. They drugged him up and once he was sedated things went pretty smoothly! The doctor sewed up his lip and discovered that his missing tooth had actually been pushed all the way up back into his gum! They took the tooth out and we were free to take him home.
So after an awful day, we finally got our two boys home, Ethan all stitched up and missing his front tooth. My mom said Jack was amazing, even though her went like six and a half hours without eating! He barely even cried and I'm pretty sure we had some help from above in keeping him so happy. I was so proud of both my boys, especially with how brave Ethan was through the whole ordeal! It was a rough day, and I have been assured that with two boys, it won't be my last ER visit, but I'm hoping there is at least a big break before we have to do anything similar to this again! I am very grateful for all the help we had that day, and for those who have visited Ethan or called. I'm also grateful beyond measure that it wasn't something more serious and that my little man will be just fine in the long run!
