No Good, Very Bad Day

Anderson is not even one year old yet and we've already had a visit to the emergency room. Luckily it was not serious but it was still a scary experience and a very long day. It started on Friday at 9 in the morning when I was eating my breakfast. Anderson wanted some of my english muffin so he was standing on the coffee table trying to get it. All of a sudden he slipped and hit his mouth on the table. It wasn't a bad fall but in the process he bit his tongue really bad. Of course, I did not know this at the time. All I saw was blood coming out of his mouth and I was scared! I had no idea whether he had hit his tooth, gums, or what had happened. I immediately started to rinse his mouth under the faucet which is hard to do when a baby is sobbing uncontrollably. I finally got a look in his mouth and saw that it was his tongue. Since you can't apply pressure I just left it alone and gave him some ice and pretty soon he was exhausted, the bleeding had stopped, and I put him down for a nap.

When I went to check on him about 2 hours later his mouth was covered in blood. I immediately started to panic because I knew that it probably should have stopped by now. I called the pediatrician's office and they told me to come in and they'd take a look. I barely packed the diaper bag since the office is 3 blocks away and didn't think we'd be gone long. After waiting for 15 minutes we finally saw a doctor. She saw that it was still bleeding and said, "I need to send you to the ER since this happened several hours ago". That was the LAST thing I wanted to hear! I started to tear up and immediately called Dan to tell him what she had said. I knew I was in for a long day and Anderson was already fussy and tired from everyone trying to look in his mouth.

Long story short we ended up doing a lot more waiting and finally getting seen by a doctor at the hospital. Luckily Hoboken's hospital is pretty quiet and we didn't have to wait too long. It's more of a process of checking in, getting information, etc. Basically by the time we saw the doctor the bleeding had stopped and a clot had formed. He said, "Leave it alone. The tongue heals fast and all we need to do is just keep an eye on it, give him cold things, and it should be fine." I was very frustrated that the pediatrician had thought it was necessary for us to go to the hospital but what can you do? Always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to your baby.

Overall, it was an exhausting day. The tongue still has the visible cut and bite marks on it but is healing fast. Hopefully this is the last trip we'll ever have to take to the emergency room!

Dan left work right away when I told him where we were headed. Anderson was so tired, hungry, and fussy at this point and was happy to see his daddy. Even though you can't tell by this picture. :)