Jaide Broke Her Arm

So I'm really behind on blogging.  I've started like 10 drafts, the first one is titled "General Conference Weekend" so ya, I'm way behind.  The longer I wait the harder it is to catch up!  My goal is to catch up this weekend.

But.... I need to post about our day yesterday.

Around 4:15pm Tuesday I heard Jami screaming "nooo!" at the top of her lungs.  Like that real scream that fills your body with adrenaline when you hear it.  Somehow the twirls had opened the gate and started falling down the stairs.  Jami caught Siena after a few stairs, but Jaide tumbled the whole way down.  All 13 stairs.  Stopped only by the wall at the bottom.

I ran from the office, past Jami and Siena, flew down the stairs, and scooped her up.  Everyone was scared and the twirls were crying.  Jaide was crying, but not screaming or writhing in pain.  She didn't loose consciousness or vomit.  Her eyes were dilating correctly.  There was no bleeding.  I took the twirls to the black couch and Jami turned on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to help them calm down.  Then she made them warm chocolate milks that they both drank.  After the milks we took them to the toy room to play with the train tracks and assess Jaide's behavior.  We were making her giggle and she was putting the tracks together with us.  Everything seemed normal.  I called our pediatrician and asked the nurse what to do.  The nurse said based on her age and the length of the fall that she needs to be seen tonight.  They were about to close so she recommended that I take her to the Pediatric ER in St. Joe's (where they were born).  After I got off the phone, Jaide started to crawl to get a toy.  When she put weight on her arms she started crying again.  I held her until she calmed down, then I gently started squeezing her arms to see what was going on.  Her right arm was fine, but she cried when I squeezed on her left forearm.  But if she wasn't putting weight on it, she was just fine.  Ugh.  Sounds like a break to me.

Thank goodness Jami is here!  Jake was in Chicago again (you thought I was joking when I said this rotation was going to be a lot of stress for us, but why does this stuff happen when he's gone!?  Murphy's Law).  Jami helped me gather stuff together, then she held down the fort while I took Jaide to the ER.

During the 20 min drive to St. Joe's lots of things were running through my mind.  I called Jake and explained what was going on.  Then we talked about how I was doing.  It is easy to blame yourself: "what if I did this?" or "if only I had done that!"  It all happened so fast!  The twirls are always trying to get into stuff, and I am very careful.  We use gates, locks, latches, safety knobs, outlet covers, corner protectors, etc.  Most adults are pretty annoyed at how hard it is to open stuff when they come visit.  We are trying the best we can.  Accidents will happen.  I'm grateful that she didn't get seriously injured.

When talking it through with Jake though, I realized that I have been teaching them some bad habits.  Normally I carry the twirls down the stairs in the morning.  But I decided it was too risky since I didn't have a hand to hold the railing.  So I started sitting down and bum-scooting to the bottom with the twirls on my lap.  Scarlett loved racing me and it seemed like a safe way to travel.  Sometimes with all three girls!  But lately I have noticed that the twirls will just walk over to me and step out onto my lap.  Knowing that I will catch them.  Like a crazy trust exercise.  I have thought on a few occasions that I just need to take the time to turn them around and make them climb down on their bellies.  But I am always in a rush and don't want to take the time to let them crawl at their own pace (which usually involves a lot of climbing back up the stairs trying to get away from me to be funny).  So they know how to go down stairs on their own, but the last month or so they've only gone down on my lap.  Lesson Learned.  We will no longer bum scoot as a family down the stairs in the morning.

We walked in the ER and they took us to the Pediatric ER wing.  Luckily it was a quiet evening and we got a nice big room to ourselves - with cartoons playing on a TV!  Thank goodness!  So many people came to ask what happened and assess her but the TV kept her calm and focused on something besides the chaos.  The nurse brought us a little tiny baby gown and her hospital anklet.  The doctor resident came in to talk to her and look her over.  She didn't cry when he squeezed her arm but once he stopped touching her she buried her face in my chest and started crying.  I think she was too scared/shy to cry at first.  So sad!  She had a goose egg on the center of her forehead and carpet burn on her cheek.  Because of the head trauma the Dr told me they have a software program where he inputs all her information, the info from the incident, and all her symptoms.  The software then tells you the risk/benefits of doing an MRI.  He came back a few min later with an older doctor.  She came over and looked Jaide over (the 4th person to look her over head-to-toe since we arrived).  When she squeezed Jaide's left arm, Jaide's shoulders would tense up but she didn't scream or cry (until after she stopped touching her).  They told me that they were not worried about a head injury at all (what a blessing!) but that they wanted a few x-rays of her forearm.  She wasn't screaming in pain, but she showed signs of repeatable discomfort.  They wanted to look at the whole arm and clavicle to be safe, but specifically the forearm.

We had to wait like 20 min to go do the xrays.  Jaide was on the bed and in her diaper from the last exam.  Once everyone left, she started looking around and started smiling when she realized she was on the big bed all by herself.  She was so happy!  She thought it was so funny that her binky wasn't attached to anything.  She was using both arms and in such a good mood, so I started to get hopeful that her arm was just sprained.

Jami noticed Jaide was holding the "blue snowflake bear" (as Scarlett named it) a lot this week.  So we brought that and her headband (this girl LOVES to dress up and be so pretty).  I'm so glad we grabbed them cause she was so happy with her toys.  She kept kissing her bear.

I decided to record how cute she was being.  If you only want to watch a little bit, watch from 1:40 to 1:55.  I didn't catch what she was saying til I re-watched it tonight (I added subtitles to the video to help you catch it too).  HOW CUTE!!!!!

When my mom was here in October she bought Lucky Charms for all my girls.  The little stinkers only ate the marshmallows and left all the brown crunchy cereal in their bowls.  I even told them I would never buy them again if they didn't eat it all.  The threats were useless.  We were left with a box of brown oat cereal - which, for the record, is NOT magically delicious.  A few days later we received an Amazon package with a 1 lb bag of those marshmallows!  Grammy: 1, Mom: 0.  haha!  I only break out those on special occasions and usually they only get a small handful.  But since Jaide was having a rough night (as Scarlett would say) I brought her a big bag all to herself.

The xray wasn't as bad as I imagined.  They put a lead vest on me and a little lead blanket on Jaide.  Then I got to stay and hold her during the xray.  Even though she would cry, she was very still so the xrays didn't take too long.  I was so glad I got to hold her and stroke her face the whole time instead of waiting in the hall while they strapped her down (which I think happened to Jami when she was little).  Ironically I did a similar thing while Scarlett got her teeth xrayed less than two weeks ago.  AND one week ago I had my neck xrayed at the chiropractor!  Thank goodness I'm not pregnant - or it might come out with two heads!  After the xrays we walked back to our room.  There was an older gentleman waiting in the hallway who yelled after me "is the baby ok?" I assured him she would be fine.  We ate yogurt and applesauce while waiting for the results.  

I got a text from Jami with love from her sisters.  Jaide loved looking at these photos:

Both of the girls wanted to look at their photos after Jami took them.  Siena would clap and giggle at herself.  Scarlett noticed her photo was blurry: "oh nuts, it's smudgy - that's my favorite one!"  Jami fed them and bathed them.  After bath time they had wet hair.  Scarlett said "Look!  We both have curly, golden hair.  We are the twins tonight!"

The doctors came back in and told us it looks like her forearm is broken.  Then she started explaining the break by saying, "you know how when you step on a soda can the metal bulges outward?"  I thought for a second then asked "so her break is an axial compression?"  She was surprised and said "exactly!"  Then we chatted for a few min about engineering (her hubby is a civil engineer).  Just another instance where I'm grateful for my enginerding degree.  The dr did say that it's a good break to have cause in like a year or so it will grow out and you'll never know that it was there.  I wonder if they are less painful than fractures too, or maybe Jaide just has a high pain tolerance (like Jake who broke his foot and walked on it for a few weeks before telling his mom).

They gave her some Tylenol then some nurses came in and put a splint on her arm.  Jaide did NOT love that part.  Or the part where I asked them to hold her while I ran to the potty.  Luckily these awesome nurses carry bubbles in their pockets.  

I don't know why I didn't bring different jammies just in case.  Luckily I had a blanket to wrap her up tight to keep her warm when we went to the car.

Five hours after her tumble we were back home.  She immediately put on a hat and grabbed her lawn mower.  It made us all feel better to see her smiling.  Especially her sisters who stayed up and were worried about her.

Since Jake was out of town, our home teachers came over right when we got home and gave Jaide a blessing.  I am so grateful to have the gospel and a network of faithful priesthood holders to help us in our times of need.  We went to bed way too late that night.  When we went up the stairs, Jaide didn't seem scared or worried to be back on them.  She got right back on that horse.

The girls all slept through the night and woke up at their normal time.  But the late night made us all tired and grumpy.  We all took naps and had a much better afternoon.  I was impressed at how happy Jaide was - actually she was really being sassy!  haha!  She never seemed bothered by her splint, just use her other hand for stuff.  Jami caught her hiding a crayon inside the splint (probably just beginning of things I'll find in there).  She has pulled on the bandage a few times and unwrapped it a bit.  But we see the pediatric orthopedist on Friday morning.  So it only has to last another day.  I'm so glad we have all these excellent medical centers in our backyard (Ann Arbor).  Especially all the children's specialists.

I used to think things like this only happened because I needed to learn a lesson.  But once when I said that to Jake he told me he didn't think that was accurate.  Sometimes that may be the case.  But other times maybe it was just an accident.  We are given the gift of agency in this life.  What a blessing to be able to make choices and learn from our experiences.  I do think that Heavenly Father gives us trials or "learning opportunities" at certain times in our lives, but He also lets us exercise our agency by making our own choices and dealing with the consequences.  So did this need to happen or did I make it happen?  It doesn't matter.  What does matter is that we take the time to reflect on our experience and see what we can learn and how we can grow.  Often it takes a long time to really understand how that instance affected our lives.  Many of my past trials took years of healing and forgiveness before I could really see past it and learn from it.  But I learned a very important lesson in the hospital room that night...

I looked at Jaide like the special, sweet, adorable, and INDIVIDUAL person that she is.  Most of their lives I have looked at the Twirls as a unit.  I fed them, changed them, rocked them, bathed them, etc - ALL together.  And I needed it to be that way.  I was desperately scraping by and was in survival mode.  And it worked well cause they really are identical (they do so much alike).  But the past few months their individual personalities have started to bloom and we've been able to see them as two little toddlers, not just a set of twins.  But while I was playing with her and her little bear that night I realized that I have NEVER taken one of the twirls anywhere fun by themselves (not that this was "fun" but you know what I mean).  It was so sweet to just be with her and dote on her.  Spend hours holding and comforting just her.  Looking into her eyes and focusing on only Jaide.  I was so sad that I haven't made the time to do this before.  And I think that Scarlett and Siena enjoyed their one-on-one time too.  Did Jaide need to break her arm so I could learn this lesson?  I don't know.  I hope not.  But I do know that I went to bed that night with a strong resolve to spend more individual time with each of my girls.  I need to plan regular special mommy-daughter dates.  Now I just need to figure out the logistics....

What a traumatic day.  I feel awful that Jaide broke her arm, but it could have been SOOO much worse.  I am so thankful for the power of the Priesthood.  I'm grateful for our home teachers.  I'm grateful Jami was here.  I'm grateful that Jaide wasn't seriously injured.  I'm grateful for all my wonderful friends that I know I could have called if I needed anything.  I'm grateful for our agency and a loving Heavenly Father who lets us fall so we can learn how to pick ourselves back up.