The Age of Clumsiness and Illness

Scarlet is causing me all kinds of grief these days, but it's really not her fault. She has finally reached that age where everything--absolutely EVERYTHING--she does leads to bumps and cuts and bruises. She is so clumsy now! She's been walking for three-ish months but suddenly it's like her feet are too big or too small for the rest of her and she trips over her own feet, her shoes, the carpet, the stairs, and sometimes literally nothing at all. On more than one occasion, I've seen her drop from a dead standstill, having fallen over nothing. It's exasperating and more than a little funny.

She fell down the stairs at my sister's house (despite my having put up a gate to prevent her from climbing the stairs) and got a nice scab on her right cheek that is almost entirely healed now. She also got a scratch down her other cheek that scabbed over whose origin is entirely unknown to me. She also fell at the play place at Chik-fil-a and slammed her forehead into the shoe cubby holes and got a lovely greenish bruise between the eyes. She also smashed my phone into her forehead and had a pinkish mark underneath her bangs for a few hours. That was just in one week.

A few weeks ago, I was playing with Scarlet by holding her hands and pulling her up and twisting her from side to side to get her laughing. It was adorable. After a time, she started to cry for a couple of minutes and then stopped suddenly. I was concerned but she seemed fine and relatively happy so I brushed it off. I took her with me to book club and she was somewhat fussy there, which was uncharacteristic of her. When Josh was changing her into pajamas that night, she started to cry a little bit and we were both concerned by then. I wanted to take her to the ER to have her checked out at that point, but Josh thought we should let her sleep it off and take her to see her pediatrician the next day if she was still feeling out of sorts. Well she was fussy the next day, so we took her to see her doctor, who confirmed she had nursemaid's elbow. The tendon in her elbow had been pulled askew by my swinging her, which was easy enough to fix (the doctor snapped it painlessly back into place in a second), but which meant that her elbow was more susceptible to that particular injury in the future. I've been incredibly careful ever since, but the guilt in knowing I injured my own baby will probably never go away entirely. Scarlet didn't cry in the doctor's office, but heaven knows I did.

On Sunday afternoon, Scarlet started to act a bit fussy, which is always a hint that she's not feeling well. We put her down to sleep a little earlier than usual, but she woke us up at one in the morning because she had vomited all over her bed, the poor thing. We were more than a little concerned because aside from spit-up, Scarlet had never vomited before. Josh cleaned her up and I changed her into new pajamas and cuddled with her in our big bed for a few minutes before Josh put her back into her own bed. Then twenty minutes later she started crying again, so I went in and checked on her. She hadn't thrown up again so I rocked her and sang to her and put her back down. It was odd for her to start crying for no reason, but I figured she just needed help getting back to sleep. Twenty minutes after that, she was sobbing again, so I got her out and carried her to my bed, thinking to sleep with her in the bed for a little bit. Instead, Scarlet threw up all over our bed. Ah. So THAT'S why she was crying.

That began the long morning wherein I sat with Scarlet in the rocking chair in her room, holding her and leaning her over a bowl each time she started to gag. She threw up a lot. She also needed several urgent diaper changes. She was so uncomfortable and feeling so poorly, that she was unable to sleep regularly and kept tossing and turning and crying and sleeping and waking up and starting it all over again. It was a LONG. NIGHT. Just before seven o'clock, I passed Scarlet off to Josh and I stumbled into bed. I was dead to the world until 2 in the afternoon. Josh, of course, had taken the day off from work to look after Scarlet. We were both headachey and exhausted the rest of the day. Apparently it takes two adults to look after one sick baby.

Anyway, that is an example of our first experiences with Scarlet's new stage of development: clumsiness and illness. I'm pretty sure this is a transition that will be permanent in her early childhood and perhaps later, but I am not excited about it. I miss her feeling healthy and happy and I miss not worrying about her as much.