Ana's boo-boo

Bee stings, scraped knees, slivers and goose eggs. Been there, done that.

We can now add stitches to the list.

Last night, we were enjoying a family dinner at Seth's grandparents' house in Rexburg. The food was good, the company was good, the atmosphere was good.

After most of the festivities were over, I was sitting in the living room visiting with others when I heard Ana start to cry. I went to the top of the stairs of the split entry to see Ana crying on the stone landing by the front door. Seth's cousin's wife picked up our little girl, and I figured I could take over the duties of comforter once Jessica had made it to the top of the stairs. But when she cried out, "She's bleeding!" I ran down the stairs to grab Ana and assess the situation.

She was, of course, bleeding; and it was no small amount. Through the accounts of others, we learned that Ana had been headed up from the basement when she tripped on a stair and hit her head on the edge of the stone landing.

Of course, any head injury bleeds a lot. An experience with an errant baseball bat to my head taught me that when I was 10. But once we got enough napkins to stop most of the bleeding, we could see that Ana had a small gash above her left eye immediately below her eyebrow.

With the help of others, we got the blood off her hands and ear and got the cut stopped well enough to get in the car. Not having dealt with this as parents before, we weren't sure if the cut warranted stitches. Initially we didn't think so. So we stopped at Wal-mart to buy some surgical tape to patch her up.

But by the time we got home and her cut was still oozing blood, we decided to play it safe.

Ana's ouchie, our patch-up job, and the blood still oozing.

We changed her to her pajamas, packed up her beloved teddy bear, baba (pacifier) and monkey blankie, and I took Ana to the ER while Seth put Bekah to bed.

I had hoped to avoid the ER, but at 8:30 on a Sunday night, it's the only place that's open. So Ana and I became very well acquainted with the waiting room while we ... well, waited for our turn.

Eventually, we saw the triage nurse. Ana didn't want the nurse to look at her eye. And she most certainly didn't want to have some weird clip thing put on her thumb so the nurse could check her vitals. But with the help of a few fruit snacks, we survived.

When we got back into the ER itself, Ana suffered more trauma when the physician's assistant removed her bandage and applied an anesthetic. When I had my head stitches, my anesthetic was in shot form; it was the worst part of the whole stitches experience. So I was grateful that Ana could have some goop on a cotton swab and become just as numb.

But, of course, we had more waiting to do. Ana wouldn't be completely numb for 20-30 minutes. So we bade our time by cuddling up with her lovies and telling stories. Finally, what we came for came to pass.

The nurse wrapped Ana up tightly in her blanket so her arms were pinned at her sides. Although the physician's assistant had suggested earlier that I leave for the stitches, the look on my face must have communicated that I would NOT be leaving my baby's side, so I got to hold her arms and legs and tell her what a big, brave girl she was.

The nurse held her head and tried to balance the cloth that covered Ana's face so that the physician's assistant could see what he was doing but also so Ana could look at me with her good eye. Any time the cloth shifted and she couldn't see, she would cry out, "I want to see Mama!"

All in all, it was very traumatic for Analee. She screamed and cried throughout the operation. The nurse reassured me that it wasn't because of the pain; she couldn't feel the needle that was piercing her skin. I told him that I was well aware of that. She was just a scared little 2-year-old.

Gratefully, we all survived. And Ana was rewarded with a sucker and a teddy bear (which she HAD to sleep with last night).

She didn't get to bed until 11:30 (her usual bedtime is 8 p.m.), she's now sporting a lovely shiner and three blue stitches, and she flips out any time Bekah or I try to look at her eye, but this too shall pass. At least, until we suffer more trauma on Friday when we have to go back to the hospital to get her stitches removed.

Ana checking out her stitches after we got home from the hospital. She refused to see her eye when she had the tape on; she didn't get a good look at it until we were in the waiting room and she checked herself out in the wavy mirror in the kids' area. So when I asked her if she wanted to see her stitches and she readily said yes, I was surprised. And, of course, she's keeping her new teddy bear close by.

The stitches and her swollen eye. Poor Quasimodo girl.