We have some family pictures (yay yay yay!!!!) scheduled in a week and a half with my amazing photog friend, Jen Flanagan of Image Market Photography (the same awesome gal who did my maternity pics,Ev's new baby pics, and Tory's senior pics). Everleigh has a longstanding history of growing her fingernails faster than you could possibly imagine, and scratching her face/ears/head/eyelids with those barely-there nails anytime she is frustrated, crying, sleepy, etc. So in light of the fact that we have some important photos coming up, I was attempting last night to clip Ev's nail while she squirmed in my lap and tried to get away.
On THE LAST NAIL (her little thumb), I somehow got the tip of her finger with the clipper and before I could say OH NO! she was crying and her tiny baby thumb was bleeding everywhere. I did what any sane person would do--I put her bloody thumb in my mouth (wha?) and yelled for Scott to help me.
He was like, "what did you DO to her?!!! Step aside", and he swooped her up to rinse off her finger and apply pressure. Meanwhile, he sent me on a wild goose chase for band aids that didn't exist. So here I am with blood dripping out of my mouth, running through the house like a crazy person looking for band aids I knew were not there, when he calls to me and says he remembered the band aids were downstairs. We got her some Neosporin and did our best to fashion the band aids around her thumb in a way where she couldn't get them off.
With Scott acting like I brutally hacked the tip of our daughter's finger off, and her looking up at me like, "Mommy, WHY?", I basically felt like the worst person ever of all time. To punish myself for my misdeed, I let her sleep on the bed with me all night, even though she chose to sleep sideways with her feet up on my stomach (kicking away), and I laid awake half the night thinking, "how could I have done this?" and picturing her thumb all hacked up and bloody today while she attempted to crawl and play. I worried. I got teary. I apologized a hundred times to her while she slept.
This morning, she tugged her band aid off and you know what? There was no more blood. It still looked like I caught a few little layers of skin with the clippers, and it will need to heal over the next few days, but she was FINE. Glad I swallowed blood, worried all night, and made myself sick feeling such deep shame over a tiny cut.
Welcome to motherhood.
3 comments:
Been there! I did that to Cash when he was about Everleigh's age. He's 6 now and shows no signs of permanent trauma (from that anyway! Lol)
Sounds like you're fully inducted into motherhood now!
On a more serious note though, Ahhh! I immediately knew where the story was going as soon as I read about her fingernails growing really fast.
Hope baby girl's alright! (And you too :))
Oh no! It happens. I did that once to Ellie's toe. It would NOT stop bleeding because she wouldn't sit still long enough to let the blood clot up. I called my nurse friend and made her rush to my house just to make sure I didn't permanently damage her. The only way to control the bleeding was to wrap it in some gauze.. tape it up and put a sock over it. I really thought I cut the tip of her toe off. Same thing though the next day it was fine. Do you have baby nail clippers or some of those nail scissors? In my experience I've only had accidents with the clippers not the scissors.
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