Head Injuries

I knew that children get hurt a lot but I still hate it when it's my child and she decides to surprise us with a lot of bumps and bruises in a few days. A day or two ago I was doing laundry while Tink was playing with her pegboard toy. She left the pegs scattered around the floor and decided that she wanted to play in my basket of clean laundry I was trying to fold. I told her to get out of the basket and as she was getting out she tripped and her head landed right on the corner of one of the square pegs. It was nothing major but she cried decently. Now she has a scab that rivals Harry Potter's (okay so that is a bit of an exaggeration). Here is a picture of that head injury:


Well, tonight I was really glad that Daddy had talked me into taking a first aid class in college. Not that I needed to use that knowledge tonight other than not to completely freak out. So we have been living in this house for 7 months now and Tink has played on the brick fireplace almost everyday with no problems. Tonight she wasn't even running or jumping just trying to sit. She went to sit down on the base of the fireplace and fell backwards and hit her head hard on the edge of the fireplace. Daddy grabbed her to hug her and calm her down and I did a quick look-see to see if she was bleeding, remembering that cuts on the head tend to bleed a lot. Well, I didn't see any blood so I relaxed. Tink cried but not even as hard as she cried for the above cut. She got down to go and play and Daddy grabbed her and said something along "oh my she's bleeding" and took her upstairs while I went to grab some ice to hold on the cut. When I took the ice upstairs Daddy was trying to keep me from seeing where Tink's head was bleeding. So I tried to brace myself, and reminded myself again that cuts on the head bleed more than other cuts, and told him I wanted to see it. I still felt a little shocked when he turned her around and I saw this:

If you have children I think you'll understand that you just can't explain that feeling that you get when you see your child bleeding. I can only think of it as a sinking feeling. My stomach sank, my heart sank, and my knees wanted to sink. Thankfully she was absolutely fine and in a good mood so it helped me regain my composure quickly and not totally freak out. We applied ice to help the swelling that would definitely accompany this cut. Then we put peroxide on her cut and in her hair and gave her a bath. After her bath we wanted to see how big the cut actually was. And to help you relax after seeing the above picture we took a picture of her tiny cut just for you.

So things are fine with us and her head injuries are very minor but I still didn't exactly enjoy them or appreciate her giving me that sinking feeling when I saw her hair matted with blood. For those of you who would like a little reminder of what to do with head injuries just click on this link to webMD.