"It's Just a Flesh Wound"

Lindsey was leaping onto the top of the couch tonight, despite the 2,104 warnings we've given her previously about that behavior. Just as Wayne and I were about to tell her to get off, she fell off backwards and smacked her head pretty good on the play shopping cart behind the couch.

I picked her up and was holding her when I felt stickiness coming from her hair. I couldn't tell where the cut was, but clearly there was a cut on her head. Wayne ran and got a washcloth and I held it to her head. She was crying like it was a normal kind of hurt until she took her hand away from her head and saw the blood on her palm, then she started really bawling.

So we hung out for a while and rocked and held a washcloth to her head. We were finally able to wipe away enough of the blood to see how big the wound was, about a half-inch long gash. But now it wasn't bleeding, it was just oozing.

Three hours later it is still oozing. I'm sure if we took her to a doctor s/he would say she needs stitches. If it were on her face, yes. On her scalp, well...we'll see how this looks in the morning. The last time she had to get stitches was so traumatic that she remembers it clearly, even though she was only three.

I was talking with my friend Amy the nurse about it this evening and she also seemed to think it didn't sound too serious. (Thanks, Amy!) Most reassuring of all is that Lindsey probably won't be leaping on the couch like that again. As we were sitting on the couch holding this washcloth to her head, she was reprimanding Marissa by saying, "See, Marissa? That's why you can't jump on the couch." Apparently Lindsey just needed to put a gash in her head to understand why.