Adventures with Blood

I fear this is only my first post of many about blood.

Check out this sequence of pictures for a hint of Elliott's exploring nature:

Here is his sweet smile to me after pulling this infant bouncy seat next to the window.



And here he is in action. He was bouncing all over the place while he climbed up but it didn't slow him down at all.


And within seconds he was standing on the bouncy seat with his feet not touching solid ground at all. He was quite delighted with his accomplishment.




This adventure ended without incident. However, a few days ago, we had an incident.

There was blood. Lots of blood.

He was standing holding onto a metal futon style chair. I was sitting right next to him just in case. Well, my just-in-case position wasn't good enough. Jason walked in and Elliott flung himself in pure excitement and hit his chin on the metal chair. At least that's what we think he hit. All we saw was mouthfuls of blood pouring out. He was screaming and we couldn't see what was bleeding (a tooth? split gum? tongue?) so we jumped into our van to head to the walk in clinic.

The bleeding stopped along the way but we thought it would be wise to get him checked out anyway. We discovered he bit his tongue pretty hard. With the help of hydrogen peroxide, Tylenol and time, he has healed up very nicely. No stitches at all.

Lessons learned from this first adventure with blood:

1. Babies are unpredictable (you would've thought I would've learned this one already)

2. Metal chairs are hard.

3. Soak your clothes in cold water to remove blood stains.

4. Even if the bleeding has stopped, walk into the clinic or hospital holding the blood-soaked towel. This will help you get into triage right away.

Hopefully we won't have many more adventures with blood. But as my sister-in-law reminded me, we did name him Elliott Ray with the initials "ER". Oh well.