Broken Baby

So last Wednesday was a bad day. Around 8 hubby had me call him and he told me that Liam had fallen out of his crib this morning but he was doing alright, he just wanted to give me a heads up so I knew what was going on. OK, poor kid but as long as he is alright then it isn't that bad. Execpt he wasn't. At the end of my lunch break (around 9:45) hubby called again saying that Liam is apparently still upset and my sister in law, who was watching him thinks that he needs to be taken to Instacare and that I need to do it. Awesome. So I went and found my supivisor and explained what was going on and by 10 I was on my way to Liam.

When I go there the first thing he said to me was "owie", so sad. He was just laying on my sister in law's chest and apparently hadn't wanted to move or go anywhere all morning. We hung out for a little bit so I could get an idea of how bad he was and considering he kept randomly crying and holding his arm, I decided to have my mom look at him (she was an RN). So off to my mom's we go. She called me on the way and basically said we need to take him because there is no way for her to know if anything was broken, expecially in a toddler because she had never dealt with this before. On the way to my mom's, poor Liam fell asleep because it was his nap time but then woke up again when we got to her place and she sat in the back with him to try and comfort him on the way to the doctor.

We got there and he wanted to be held by me most of the time. He refused to stand on the scale to get weighed and was just freaking out in general. We hung out in the room for a bit before a doctor came in and basically told us that he needs an x-ray and a tech will be in soon to take care of that. We went to get x-rayed and he was allowed to sit on my lap to do it. The first few he was pretty good for, he just put his arm on the board, and the nurse would turn it a little for the right angle and he fussed a little but no big deal. Then we had to have his arm straight to get ones of the elbow, that didn't go over well. I had to hold him down and the nurse (tech I guess) would hold his arm down at the correct angle and he screamed like we were killing him. We managed to get the 3 and then I was trying to comfort him but I was wearing one of those bulky vests that are supposed to protect you and couldn't hold him very well so my mom came in and grabbed him from me to take him back to the room. I followed them a couple minutes later and they are standing outside the room with Liam clinging to my mom's leg, refusing to go in the room. We finally convinced him to come to me and I carried him back to the room to wait for the doctor to give us the results.

Well it took awhile and my poor kid was so upset and tired from his lack of nap that he was trying to lay down on the arm of the chair, saying "night night, night night". I finally convinced him that my arm was more comfortable to lay his head on and he fell asleep.

He woke up a bit later and then the doctor came back and annouced that Liam's arm is broken. Apparently toddler bones don't actually break, they are more flexible so they bend, which isn't good either. His had bent in 2 different spots, he said we would need to put a cast on it and they would put a splint on it until they are sure they swelling goes down. And that I needed to see if his normal doctor does casts or if they could recommend an orthepedic specialist. So I ran over to his doctor (Instacare is next door to the hospital where his normal doctor is) and made an appointment to get a hard cast on him on Friday.

By then it was past 1 and I took him home, gave him some more iboprofen and put him to bed. He slept for 2 hours and when he woke up he was really cuddly and still didn't want to do much, but by dinnertime he was running around and playing and even wearing the sling that the doctor gave him.

So Friday comes around and I take Liam to the appointment for the hard cast. After waiting for what seemed like forever (it was probably more around half an hour) the physician assistant comes in and takes the sling off and takes a look at his arm and the x-rays. He decided that we can do just a cast on the bottom part of his arm, that we don't have to have it go over the elbow, unless Liam pulls it off then he will get one that goes over the elbow that he can't pull off. He did really well when getting the cast on. We explained that it will help his arm feel better, and he sat nicely and just let the doctor fix it. And he only has to have it on for 3 weeks which isn't bad.

All in all, he will survive but it was a bad day all around. It was really hard having him consistantly cry and tell me that he is in pain and not able to do anything about it. That was one of the few truely difficult moments I have had as a mom. But we got through it and we are both alright.