Parenting Clubs

this week Luke and I were initiated into yet another parenting "club" that you don't know exists until you are already a member. Things like having gone through labor and delivery, registering for a baby, finding and having your child go to child care, putting together toys late late at night on Christmas eve, cleaning up child vomit at 2 in the morning...all things that most parents you know have done but don't know there is this secret camaraderie about it until you have done it yourself.

This week was not a fun one to join. The my kids fell off something club. The club where there are bruises, and guilt. In our case there was also an ambulance ride and ct scans.

Sophie. Little phie, rolling innocently off of our 3 foot high bed onto the wood floor at camp. I wasn't there. She was in the care of the babysitter, but it could have happened to anyone. We all put her there, not remembering that he little 10 pound 6 month old body rolls like the waves so casually.

She landed face down and bumped her head.

I called the doctor and the doctor said (no more monkeys jumping on the bed?) that because of her age she should go to the ER.

So I took my smiley little baby girl to the gettysburg ER (read: the first aid station). Everything was fine they said. She's acting normal. Look for this, and this, and this. If those happen than worry.

But those didn't happen. However what did happen was her soft spot on the top of her head started to swell and bulge. That can't be good. Luke took her back at 9 that night.

After a CT scan (which they "usually don't do to someone so young unless it is worrisome enough". Apparently this was), and a lot of waiting they wanted to send her to Hershey Childrens Hospital. The big guys. The ones who take kids that no one else knows what to do with.

So I joined them and we headed up in the ambulance at 2:30 in the morning. Scared as anything at what the next couple of hours could bring.

We saw the neuro surgeon. The pediatric trauma specialist. and Two other ER doctors.
All came and felt the soft spot, looked at the CT scans. All came to the same conclusion that the swelling is really bad, but she's acting fine. So we were discharged.

And the only thing that we came home with was a huge sigh of relief and a night of absolutely no sleep.

So we joined the club. It is amazing how supportive people were. And how many of the parents I have talked to since who have told me stories of going through the same thing. Ok, not the same thing, ours seemed to be on the scarier side, but still the worry and torture of seeing the little helpless one they love suffer through.

Every parent joins the club. Members only.

And I think we should come up with a really cool secret handshake.