Christmas playdate & Vivian's first ER visit

It was a good and a bad day. First, the good. My old college suitemates and I all have boys and thought it would be fun to get them together for a little Christmas playdate. Mindy offered to host and the kids looked so cute in their matching GAP Christmas sweaters.

The boys played with Lucas' train set and checked out the Christmas tree while the mommies caught up. Mindy had some cute crafts for the kids: gingerbread men ornaments which they decorated with sparkly dots and stickers and wreaths made by threading Fruit Loops onto pipe cleaners.


After crafts, Mindy made an awesome lunch: reindeer fluffernutter & PB sandwiches, pretzels and fruit for the kids and chicken salad on croissants for the moms. Cole let us borrow his highchair, and stupid me put Vivi into it without buckling the seatbelt thinking, "I'll just remember that I don't have her buckled when I go to take her out". Uh, yeah. That didn't happen. Poor baby fell out of her highchair and landed facedown on the rug. She cried right away, I scooped her up and started crying myself for being so ridiculously stupid. She calmed down after a few minutes and I packed up the kids to head home and call the doctor. I knew from past experience when Owen fell once when he was around 18 months, that the main things to watch for were vomiting and loss of consciousness, and she had neither. But I was still extremely shook up over it and was watching very closely the entire drive home.

I called the pediatrician when we got home and spoke with one of the nurses. Vivi was following me around while I spoke to the nurse and she could be heard giggling in the background. The nurse told me she was likely just fine, it was an accident and to try not to beat myself up about it. She said it was okay to put her down for a nap, but that if she was sleeping longer than 2 hours, to gently wake her to check on her.

Vivi slept for about an hour and 45 minutes before I got anxious and woke her myself. She woke up in a good mood, and I strapped her in her highchair to give her and Owen a snack. As she was munching away at some grapefruit and Cheerios, I kept looking at her eyes and thought that her one pupil looked slightly larger than the other. Another call to the pediatrician and they said to bring her in to the ER right away.

Of course I freak out at that point. We jumped in the car and headed over to the hospital. It took about 15 minutes to get checked in, and the nurse looked her over. The doctor came in and checked her out, but Vivi was upset by the entire situation and was crying so they couldn't get a great look at her pupils. They recommended we do an MRI just to double-check that there wasn't a skull fracture because of the fall. She cried through most of it, but did surprisingly well during the scan. The doctor told us that they have a state-of-the-art pediatric MRI machine which emits the lowest level of radiation necessary for the picture, which was reassuring.

Took another thirty to forty minutes before we had the results. Owen was entertained the entire time by a cart of books in the hallway, and Vivi just wanted to walk around the room and check everything out, even with the little toe heart rate monitor thingy hanging off her foot. I knew everything was okay when I saw the doctor's face as she walked towards the glass door of our room to tell us the news. Everything checked out fine, thank GOD.

By the time we got home it was 7:30pm and as I fed her I noticed Vivi had developed the beginning of a black eye. :(

I cannot stop thinking about what happened and am just so thankful that she is okay. Things can happen in a split-second. I'm trying to forgive myself, but in reality, I don't know that I ever will. I am trying to remember that I am a good mom who made a mistake, but with my Type-A personality, it's challenging. Especially now with the constant reminder when I look at my baby. I'm hoping she'll be more forgiving of me than I am of myself. I hope that anyone who reads this post learns from our experience and always, always, always uses the seat belt buckles on the highchair. I know I will.