♥: Bike Crash = Stiches

My biggest fear as a mom is something I've always known I would eventually have to deal with... seeing one of my children hurt and in pain from some sort of accident. The traumatic moment came when we were on Sugarland trail, a paved trail that runs through the backwoods of our neighborhood. I was running and pushing a stroller and Bridger was far ahead, riding his bike like a speed demon, when I watched him waver and fall hard on the ground. Bridger is good on his bike and when he tells the story he says he was getting too close to a tree and tried to turn fast (over-corrected) and fell. I took him to Patient First (InstaCare) and he got five stitches. He never cried a bit, not when he crashed, not when he was stuck repeatedly in his chin by a needle... he was so brave! He really made it easy on me.

When he got done getting his stitches I took him to a nearby ChickFilA for chicken nuggets and an ice-cream cone. Having his chin numb made it hard to eat, but I think it sealed it off as an exciting experience nonetheless. For a week the first thing he would say to anybody new was "I got five stitches on my chin!" A week later Devin cut the stitches out himself.

I think the worst part of the ordeal was right when he fell. We were out on the trail and when I caught up with him he was standing over his bike, watching a puddle of blood fill by drops. At that moment I didn't quite know what to do. I seemed to deliberate in my mind for a while, but I'm sure it was only a matter of seconds before I booted Myra from the stroller to put Bridger in her place, pulled off my shirt to use as pressure against his chin and to stop the bleeding, heaved his bike onto the handle bars of the double jogger, and ran off to the Calderwoods (whose house was the closest to the scene).

When Corinne came to the door the first thing I asked her was for a shirt (having me show up on her doorstep in only a sports bra must have been strange). Then I asked, but basically dumped my other kids on her so I could take Bridger in for stitches. But first I ran home, bandaged his wound, and got the car. The doctor called it a burst wound, because it wasn't a straight cut, it was shaped more like a star, and it was deep. The young, male nurse who helped us before the doctor came talked us through everything he was doing, but I thought he was mostly talking to himself, he seemed more nervous than Bridger.

Unfortunately, stitches weren't the only thing Bridger needed. He had a wiggly tooth he'd been complaining about after his fall. When I finally looked in his mouth myself I saw that his tooth had cracked into two pieces and only half of it was wiggly. It wasn't his molar because those haven't grown in yet, but whatever tooth it is in the back, top, left of his mouth. We had reason to be grateful because our neighbor works at a dentist office. She got us an emergency appointment, and though she wasn't working that day, the dentist told us she had called in at least five times to remind them to be good to us. They were. They were so kind and somehow, after several x-rays and half of Bridger's tooth was extracted, we walked away without paying a thing. We will have to go back again for a baby root canal to numb that nerve as he still has trouble chewing on that side.