Sunday, September 12, 2004

Face Plant!

Ruby is now sitting up on her own, and the other day, she was sitting on her cushioned pad (old dog bed) with blankets and pillows on either side.

I was in the kitchen putting dishes away, and Ani went to wash her hands in the bathroom. In the limited time that she was left to her own devices, Ruby leaned forward, pushed herself up, and launched face forward over the padded space immediately in front of her and right into the hardwood floor. Ani and I both heard the resounding thud, and we had already rushed into the living room before the inevitable wailing began. I picked up my beautiful daughter, and her face was purple from screaming. There were a couple of drops of blood at the base of her nostrils. AAAAAAAAAAARGH!

Ani and I both went into panic mode, screaming things like, “we broke the baby” and “oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit”. We kept panicking long after Ruby stopped crying, and we even continued for a while after she started giggling at her silly distressed guardians. I’m not sure if we were about to fall down in an exhausted heap and sulk because we broke our daughter’s nose or rush to the hospital. I’m pretty sure we were on the verge of doing both. Of course, this happened minutes after our pediatrician’s office closed, and I spent fifteen minutes on hold with the pediatric emergency back up service whose number was on our doctor’s answering machine. I sat there listening to crappy midi music coupled with a repeating recording of a lady telling me that my call was important to her, but if I had a real emergency, I should call 911. Ruby sat on my lap playing with her toy and looking coyly at me. Finally I decided that she wasn’t broken and hung up the phone. Ani wasn’t so sure, because she searched the internet, and found a site that told her that if our child fell off of a table and had blood coming out of her nose, we should go to the doctor immediately. I said that there was a difference between a fall from a table and a fall onto the floor from that same floor, and that Ruby had only two drops of blood, but Ani still looked worried, so I started to get myself ready to go to the hospital. Ani called her mom, and was soothed by whatever Zaiga said. Thank you Zaiga!

We spent the rest of the evening paranoid that Ruby would stop breathing or explode spontaneously. I think I got up to check if her chest was still rising and falling four or five times in the night. I hadn’t done that since she was teeny-tiny. I don’t know what I’m going to do when she skins her knee or breaks her arm. If this was any indication though, I’ll probably squeal like a small child and pee myself. I bet that’s what Dr. Spock recommends, right?