Stitches Already!

James beat his brother and sister at having stitches and he's only 2 years old. He did have help in getting them from his brother. Monday night just before Ryan got home from work, I was working downstairs and heard a blood curdling scream upstairs. By the time I got up there (all of 2 seconds), the side of James' face was covered in blood. I ran him into the bathroom to clean him up and figure out where the bleeding was coming from. While I was doing this, I called Ryan to let him know what was going on and freaking out at the same time. He called our neighbor who came over to look at it with me as I was unsure what to do. James had a cut in the crease under his eye and a nice scratch down his face. The bleeding had slowed down a lot and was just bleeding here and there. My neighbor thought it was fine and when Ryan got home he thought James would be ok too. I wasn't sure but knew I was an overzealous mom. The story I finally got on how it happened (3 hours later after James felt up to telling on Benji) was that Benji was rocking our entertainment center with his feet slightly. That made a huge heavy stone tile with a saying about families on it that Dave and Kim made for us a couple of Christmases ago fall and hit James. We were lucky it was just a little higher as James could have lost his eye. I guess James just needed to be hit upside the head with the message that Families are a Blessing!

That night, we put Neosporin on a bandaid and put it on his cut. I made him sleep in our bed so I could watch him. In the morning, you could tell it had been bleeding some through the night so I made Ryan take him into the doctor as I had my own doctor's appointment that morning. I just wanted to be sure he was going to be ok as I still didn't have a great feeling about it.

We got Benji and Alyssa to school and I headed for my appointment while Ryan took James to the doctor. I finished my appointment at 9:45 and called Ryan to see if he was at work so I could pick up James. They were still at the doctor's office and the doctor still hadn't determined what they were going to do with James. Since it was in the crease under his eye, it was hard to determine exactly what the damage was. After I got to James' doctor, he came in and looked at it again and determined it needed stitches. We were definitely blessed. I guess after it's been so long, the doctor can't normally do stitches as it has started to heal but I guess they were able to with James because it was still bleeding a little bit.

Have you ever seen a doctor try to stitch a 2 year old? It's like trying to hit a moving target. They had to strap James onto a papoose board which has him strapped from his head to his feet. On top of it, Ryan had to put the weight of his upper body on James as he was trying to wiggle out of it and screaming at the top of his lungs. Good thing Ryan was there because all I could do was stand in the corner of the room with tears streaming down my cheeks. I know it was for his own good and they were trying to help him but do you know how hard it is for a mom to stand there with her son screaming at the top of his lungs for her to help him? I can't imagine how Heavenly Father felt when his son went through the Atonement if all I could do was bawl while my son was getting stitches. We finally got through it and James has four stitches. We have to put Polysporin on it every two hours and that's just as bad as getting the stitches. You have to hold him down just to get it on. All in all, it take a good five to ten minutes depending on how hard he's fighting. He's not going to like us on Saturday when he has to go back and get them taken out but that's Ryan's job.