"You need to watch Molly all the time." "You can't take your eye off her for a second." "Your house isn't baby-proofed." "I told you so." - All friendly (if you want to call it that) advice from my mother about babyhood.
Here's the story.
I went to go change into comfy, chore-worthy clothes. Peter was watching football on tv. All the sudden I heard blood curdling screams and crying from Molly. I finished getting dressed, dismissing it as being mad at daddy for taking something away (her fits are like that.) That was until I heard Peter scream, "KIM, GET IN HERE NOW - SHE'S BLEEDING." I rushed in to take care of my poor baby, now crying so hard she's gasping. She had no idea what had happened. She's never bled before in her life - not like this.
We couldn't tell where the blood was coming from. Her nose looked like it was bleeding, her mouth was full of blood. Her lip was now swollen about three times the normal size (just in time for her school photos tomorrow!) We tried ice, she wouldn't take it and she screamed worse. So I got a cup of ice cold water and let her sip it to wash down the blood. We gave her tylenol right away to ease her pain. Poor baby.
She finally settled down enough so we could look at her mouth. Her lip was split by her gums. Then Peter and I talked about what went wrong (besides my mom's advice.)
Here's the rest of the story and what we think happened.
Molly had discovered that a plastic inflatable ring fit perfectly around her sippy cup with a flip-up straw. What a great way to carry around my drink, she must have thought. I'll just hop and skip through the house carrying my ringed sippy cup while drinking out the straw. (Bad choice - walking and drinking out of the straw.) Smack, she tripped and fell face first onto her cup. Mouth jammed against the hard plastic cup with straw in mouth successfully cutting her upper lip by her teeth.
Are we bad parents? No. Were we not watching her carefully enough? Maybe. Did we learn from our mishap? Yes, no more unsupervised straw drinking and walking.
Posted by Kim at October 25, 2004 11:08 PM