Stitches

On Friday night we had our first need for stitches with any of the kids. No surprise that Jacob was the one needing them!

Chris was eating his dinner and I was talking to him. We heard a loud, sickening thud, and then a scream from Jacob. He had been on his swing just about 10 feet away from us, but was slightly around the corner where we couldn't see what had happened.

I found him sitting on the swing with his head in his hands, screaming. Blood was all over his hands and obviously coming from his head somewhere. I checked and saw a big gash right in the middle of his forehead.

We aren't really sure how he did it...it would have been next to impossible to hit the corner of the wall in the hallway. But there was one truck toy on the floor near him, so we're wondering if he landed on it somehow.

Anyway, I tried to calm him down a bit and we got a butterfly bandage on the wound. He was shaking and really crying hard. I took the pictures above just before he walked out the front door with Chris.

Chris rushed him to the local walk-in clinic. They take their last patient at 7:15 pm and Chris said they walked in at 7:07.

At the clinic, they sent Jacob directly back to get his 5 stitches. Chris said it took two nurses holding his head down, and Chris holding his body, to get it done. He was terrified. I was so nervous about it because I know he doesn't understand medical procedures and just must have felt so incredibly scared and trapped.

But Chris said Jacob did smile when he told him "all done."

Here he is in bed when he got home (he wanted to "snuggle bed" as soon as he got back):

I slept with him on Friday night because we were worried he would try to rip the stitches out. He can't tolerate bandages and so we could only imagine how he'd deal with the stitches. Amazingly, he has pretty much left them alone!

Here he is on Saturday morning, after he took off the gauze:

We're supposed to take him to his regular doctor on Tuesday to have the stitches removed. Not looking forward to THAT.