Layla's (and Landon's!) Stitches

So this actually happened a few weeks ago, but thought I should document it on the ol' blog - Layla's stitches.

Kyle and I had just returned home from our date (in fact he was still parking the car and wasn't even upstairs yet). Chase and Laura had been babysitting, and said that Layla was acting pretty tired and clingy. I sat down on the couch with Mason, and Layla started coming over so she could sit with me. Unfortunately, she tripped on my feet and fell over, hitting the back of her head right on the edge of our coffee table. Of course she started crying immediately, and I quickly handed Mason to Chase so I could pick Layla up. I was expecting her to be fine, just a bump, but when I picked her up there was blood running all down her neck. I quickly ran her into the kitchen with Laura and we grabbed towels to try to put on her head. 

Enter Kyle, stage right. 

Kyle and I were trying to look for the cut to know if it needed stitches or not, but it was so hard to see with all of her hair, especially getting matted with the blood. So Chase and Laura kept watch over Landon and Mason while we took her back to the shower and poured some water on her head and carefully combed bits of her hair back until we could locate the cut. We determined it was deep enough to need stitches, so Kyle and Chase drove her to a nearby hospital since I needed to stay home and put Mason in bed. (Kyle said it was actually probably a good thing I didn't go, because the hospital was a little sketchy and not very modern, and I probably wouldn't have wanted to stay at that one, ha ha). 

They were only gone for about an hour tops, and returned home with Layla's head all bandaged up. She had received 2 stitches, and they had to shave just a tiny bit of her hair off around the cut in order to clean and stitch it. My sweet husband saved a little bit of her hair for me to put in her baby book since this was her first "hair cut." 

Kyle said that Layla was going ballistic when they were doing the stitches and that he and Chase had to physically hold her down :(  But by the time she made it home she was in good spirits and excited to eat the Fruit Snacks and Smarties we promised her.

We gave her Tylenol that night and the following morning, anticipating it would hurt, but she acted 100% normal and fine starting the very next morning. We did give her an antibiotic the doctor prescribed to fend off any infections, and a week later she returned to the hospital to get the stitches taken out. The worst part was that we weren't supposed to get the stitches wet, so we couldn't wash her hair for a week! Between the leftover blood, iodine, and her regular everyday sweat, her hair was looking and smelling gross a few days in!! 

When her hair is down, you can't really tell at all that any of it was shaved off. I had it in pigtails last night and you could tell that side was a little bit thinner than the other :)

Pic Kyle took at the hospital

Perfectly content now eating her candy

The next morning, cuddling with her unicorn

If anyone can make a head bandage look fashionable, it's this girl

I love her enough to snuggle even when her hair smells like a hospital & makes me want to gag

The hair is getting pretty nasty!

A head bandage didn't stop us from going to Chili's!!

Oh, I just realized I probably never mentioned on the blog back when Landon got stitches in April! We were still in Manhattan, and I had taken all three of the kids to Sonic BY MYSELF! Keep in mind Mason was only a little over a month old at this point. I had great ambitions of sitting at the picnic tables and letting Landon and Layla play on the playground while we had some snacks from Sonic. Great plan, right? Fun mom move, right? 

Well, literally FIVE MINUTES after we arrive, Landon comes running over to me crying. I was in the middle of placing our order on the intercom so I shushed him, thinking he probably wasn't injured very badly. But after I finished our order and he got all the way over to me, I realized his chin was bleeding. I'm pretty sure he said he was running up the ramp on the playground and tripped and hit his chin, probably on the edge or something. I looked more closely at it and - shudder - realized it was deep and probably needed stitches. So I was trying to hold a kleenex on his chin, but he got mad when I told him we were going to have to leave and was trying to run back over to the sandy playground, so I was literally holding him in a headlock with the kleenex on his chin while trying to call back Sonic on the intercom and cancel our order. I then had to try to stuff Landon's shoes into the diaper bag since he wouldn't put them on, and the diaper bag kept falling off the table, so I'm picking it back up - all while still holding a screaming Landon in a headlock to keep him from running back to the playground. I was also yelling at Layla to come back over from the playground that we needed to leave, but of course she wasn't obeying. So finally I decided to just carry Mason in his carseat and drag barefoot Landon back over to the van and get him in, and then went back to retrieve Layla. 

Finally we were all back in the van, all kids screaming, and I got a hold of Kyle to meet us at urgent care. Landon wound up getting just one stitch in the middle of the cut and then had steri strips on either side. 

 Of course this happened the week that he was supposed to be the ring bearer in Chase and Laura's wedding!!!

If you look closely, you can see he has a bandaid on his chin!

Kyle and I think it's funny because neither of us have ever had stitches before, and now both Landon and Layla got them within a few months of each other! Our crazy kiddos.