The Irony

Poor Livvie. She slipped yesterday, hit her head and needed 5 stitches above her eyebrow.

Did she fall off the swings? Off the fence? (as per my last post?).... No.

She was simply washing her hands in the bathroom of a shopping centre when she suddenly tripped. 

(There is the possibility that someone pushed her. And let's just say it wasn't Oliver! Elly was acting very sheepish all afternoon. In fact, we have never seen her so quiet. And neither of them can quite remember how it happened...)

I find it amazing that my girls can spend about 80% of their free-time standing on their heads, swinging upside down and hanging off things... and something as simple as a trip to the bathroom ends like this!

We were just lucky that the accident happened mere metres away from a Doctor's surgery. We were ushered in immediately and a doctor saw her straight away. Livvie wasn't complaining of any pain, but was very upset about the blood (lots of blood!). I started explaining to Livvie what would happen next...

I'm pretty sure I have mentioned before how hopeless I am in emergency situations. This time, in an attempt to keep calm I couldn't stop talking (first mistake) and I ended up giving her 'too-much information' for her little 6 year old brain;

[cringe]

'The Doctor is going to use a little needle and thread, just like Mummy has, and she is going to sew your sore head back together so it doesn't bleed anymore'.

(Yeah, this is one of the reasons why I am not a nurse. What a terrible explanation! If she wasn't scared before, she surely would be now!)

Livvie looked at me, eyes wide with horror...'What sort of fabric is she going to be sewing onto my head?'

hehe. It was pretty funny. She wasn't concerned at all about the needle that would be going into her forehead... but very concerned about what colour fabric would be sewn onto her head!

Thankfully there was no fabric involved. And seeing as my behaviour and explanations could only have added to her distress (although she did remarkably well and didn't even cry at all during the procedure), the mummy-guilt got the better of me and I let her choose a toy from the toy-shop afterwards because she was so brave and I felt so sorry for her that 1) it happened and 2) I scared her into thinking the doctor was going to sew her head back together with some ghastly fabric that she wouldn't like!

{She told me later that when everyone was talking about 'stitching it back together', she thought her head had cracked into two pieces and she would have a big stitched line down the middle of her face! All I can think now, is that she must be very relieved!}