Kip's First ER Visit

Last Thursday morning (a week ago), Mandy and I were in the bedroom chatting and Kip was on my bed. He was sitting there quite contentedly with Mandy on one side of him and bed pillows on the other side. I was getting ready for the day and I looked over at the bed and within literally a half a second Kip turned away from Mandy and crawled right off the bed. It happened so quickly there was literally no time to prevent it. He fell about 4 feet and landed on his face. I will never forget that image or that heart sinking feeling knowing I couldn't get to him in time to prevent the fall. We felt horrible. It could have easily been so much worse than it was. Praise God for that blessing.

Kip started crying instantly and he had a big rug burn on his cheek where he he hit the ground. Oddly, he only wanted Dan to hold him. Clearly he is the better parent. I called the on-call nurse at the doctor's office but she wasn't available until later in the morning. We frantically Googled symptoms of concussion in a baby and tried all kinds of things to get him to settle down. He didn't exhibit any odd symptoms but just seemed more startled and upset. After about 15 minutes he had stopped crying and was sitting on my lap when he spit-up a little bit. We decided that was symptom enough to take him into the ER to get checked out. I wasn't willing to wait an hour or more for the nurse to call us back.

Mandy, Dan, and I scrambled around to finish getting ready and jumped in the car. I've never been more grateful that we have a car now and that a hospital is just a short drive away. We got to the ER around 8 am and at that point, Kip was acting like his normal self again. Naturally. But we got checked in and after only a few minutes wait, the doctor looked him over. The first thing she said to me was, "babies falling down and getting injured is extremely common." Which, I knew, but it's not something I want to have happen again. She said he looked fine and examined his head, eyes, mouth, nose, and ears for any signs of bleeding. They apparently don't do CT scans unless the baby went unconscious or was vomiting regularly. The radiation exposure of the scan, apparently, is more risky than a concussion especially if the child doesn't even have a concussion. Apparently. She suggested we just stay a couple of hours for observation. Dan headed into work and Mandy and I tried to entertain Kip in the waiting room and eventually got him to sleep (we got the ok from the doctor to let him eat and sleep). We were back at the apartment about three hours later and I stayed home with him and Mandy the rest of the day.

Kip played, napped, and ate normally. Just a little battle wound on his cheek.

The nurse from our pediatrician's office called me back while we were at the hospital and gave us some things to look out for and scheduled an appointment with our doctor for Friday morning just to get checked one more time. Everything was good. We mentioned to the doctor that Kip doesn't seem to be aware of edges or heights yet because he literally didn't even hesitate when he crawled right off the bed, as if he thought the bed was seamless with the floor. The doctor said that depth awareness begins to develop around nine months. Since he is still on the early side of that developmental milestone, she suggested we wait a few months to see if he begins to enhance some depth perception before seeing an eye doctor or neurologist. It's really hard to help babies practice spacial awareness, like height, without it being dangerous. What are you supposed to do? Let him sit on the bed again and see if he tries to crawl off? No thank you.

For now, Kip is not allowed on our bed unless wedged between two adult bodies (like when he occasionally co-sleeps). We are trying to help him learn to turn over on his belly and slide off of the couch or something just a foot or so off the ground. Good grief, you really can't take your eyes off of him for a half a second. So anyways, yeah. First ER trip and first panic inducing parenting moment I'm hoping to never repeat.