The first big incident

The title of the post says it all, well most of it anyway. Natalie had her first big incident this past weekend. We took a road trip to Chicago to visit some family. We had a pretty busy weekend planned and the trip down went perfectly. Natalie got a little fussy at the end but I turned on Diego and all was good again. She fell asleep too and even got about an hour nap. Our first stop was Dh’s grandma’s house. Hubby’s aunt wasn’t supposed to be home but she got out of work early. She was very happy that she was going to be able to see Natalie since it’s been over a year since we have seen them. When we first arrived Natalie was still napping so we decided to wait in the car until she woke up, it only took a few minutes. We went inside and were greeted with hugs and warm welcomes. Natalie was being very shy, even shy for her. She is shy by nature but she wouldn’t even take her head off of Hubby’s shoulder to look up. They have a dog so I thought it would be a good icebreaker for her to pet the dog because she loves dogs. (This is where I mention that it’s a pretty decent size dog, they stand face to face.) Hubby put her down by the dog and she reached out to pet it and he snapped and bit her! I wasn’t right there; I just heard all the commotion. Hubby didn’t think the dog had actually gotten her at first but then she started bleeding pretty badly.

I took her thinking she would calm down but she just kept screaming “dog dog” and pointing where the dog was. She didn’t understand what had happened at all. She wouldn’t calm down a bit and after I few minutes I suggested we leave so that we could all calm down. I had been holding in all my emotions from the moment it happened, when I got in the car I just exploded. I burst into tears and I couldn’t hold it back anymore. That just made Natalie more upset so I tried to cry quietly. Meanwhile, my mom called our pediatrician to see what we should do. I didn’t want to take her in but I was so worried about the bacteria. Sure enough her doc said to take her straight to the ER. She said that even if we were in MI that she would want us to take her just because of the risk of infection.

We finally found an ER and took her straight there. Once inside we got the millions of questions. I felt bad telling them about the dog because I didn’t want anyone to get in trouble. I know it was just an accident but Natalie is my baby so I was really having mixed feelings. The doc looked at her bite and said it was pretty bad. He then asked if we had cleaned it out at all. Hubby and I just looked at each other like, it was very important to do that and we both flaked out on it! We did put antibiotic ointment on it though, doesn’t that count for something? They finally cleaned it out and did X-rays. The doc said that since it was so deep they didn’t want to stitch it because it could essentially just trap the bacteria in the wound. The X-rays were fine so they just put some glue and bandages on her hand and said we were free to go. Natalie was doing great by this point; I think it was harder on me than it was on her. As long as nobody touched her hand she was calm.

We finally left the ER with a bandaged hand and a prescription for antibiotics. I am happy to say that her hand is healing very well. She isn’t scared of dogs at all, which is wonderful. But she is scared of loud noises now. When we are playing outside if there is a loud car or truck that goes by she comes running up to me crying. It just breaks my heart because she wasn’t skittish at all before. I am very thankful though that for her some day she probably won’t remember this. Mommy will never forget it but we will get over it. Hubby said I was overacting but it was one of those situations where you beat yourself up because it even happened.