My awful night

If the writing thing wasn't bad enough, I had another terrible thing happen last night. It actually was earlier in the evening, but I was too freaked out to talk about it.

We were all on the bed, watching TV, and Kay tumbled off the bed. She cried for a second, DH picked her up, and she stopped breathing. We couldn't get her to respond, so I called 911. Just as I got the operator on line, she started breathing again. Which was good, but since I actually dialed the number, they are required to send someone out. The paramedics arrived, checked her out, said she was fine, and asked if I wanted an ambulance to the hospital. Uh, no, she's fine. Well, because I got the paramedics involved, they have to either take her to the hospital or I have to agree to take her.

So we took her to the ER. She's obviously fine, the doctors agree she's fine, and while they did diagnose her with a mild concussion, they said that she probably didn't actually stop breathing-she was just holding her breath. HUH? They gave us some literature, and sure enough, it's something that some kids her age do when they're injured or upset. They hold their breath without realizing it (except some kids do learn to use it to manipulate their parents), giving everyone quite a scare.

Just as they're filling out the discharge papers, my beloved baby decides to climb the exam table, loses her footing, and yes, goes crashing down head first on to the tiled floor. Talk about embarrassing. I can only imagine what kind of bad parents these doctors thing we are. Fortunately, they also saw me having to chase the little monster down a couple of times when she escaped the exam room, so I'm thinking they realize she's not an ordinary two year old-she's super baby! But still... how embarrassing to bring a kid in to the ER for a concussion and have her knock herself silly right as the doctors are discharging her? Needless to say we had to stay in the ER a bit longer to make sure she didn't do further damage to herself with this fall.

I'm taking her back to the doctor tomorrow to make sure she's fine (another legal thing we're required to do, apparently). She's had a few of these falls where it took her a while to take a breath (this was just longer-too long, IMO), so I do want to be thorough. Even though they gave me information on how to deal with breath holding, there's still questions I want to ask. Like, the papers say do NOT give CPR, so how do you know when it's not just simple breath holding, and actually something serious that needs CPR. Which reminds me, I haven't had a CPR class since Bay was born, probably something I need to go take care of. I was so upset when Kay wasn't breathing, that I don't think I'd have remembered what to do. I was shaking so bad, I could barely call 911.

She's perfectly fine today, you'd never know she fell and hurt herself-honestly, there was no visible damage to her at all-just the fact that we had those terrifying few moments where she was not breathing. That Man says it was only about thirty seconds, but I think it was longer. I waited the normal few seconds while he tried to get her to respond, and then it took me a while to find the phone to call 911. She didn't start breathing until the operator was on the line. So it was just a short, scary time. It took a while to come down off the adrenaline.