I come from a family of worriers so naturally once my twins Allie and Nick were born, I signed up for a \u201dPediatric Emergency\u201d class so I\u2019d be ready for anything. It was an excellent class led by an experienced ER doctor. He told us all the things you should do if your kid gets hurt, like expect a lot of blood from facial injuries and don\u2019t panic because the large quantity of blood makes it look worse than it seems. He told us that kids take their cues from us, so definitely try not to look panicked when they get hurt or your kid will freak.<\/p>\n
Sadly enough when my twins were two years old, I forgot everything from that class in an instant.<\/p>\n
There was a whole litany of great advice in this parenting class, such as when to call the pediatrician and when to go to the ER, how to babyproof your home, and why you should never let your kid play on a trampoline (ER visit-magnet). \u00a0I was so worried that I wouldn\u2019t remember all this stuff in an emergency, so I actually took notes.<\/p>\n
Years later, I was in the kitchen and my twins were playing in the next room when I heard a hard \u201dthump\u201d sound, and then I heard my daughter start screaming. I knew something really bad had happened because my daughter usually didn\u2019t cry if she took a tumble. I was immediately in the room and saw that Allie had hit her mouth on the coffee table, probably from jumping off the couch, where Nick was now standing, ready for takeoff.<\/p>\n
One second Allie was screaming with her hands covering her mouth and the next second, blood was everywhere\u201d\u201dcovering her hands, her chin, all over her shirt and the floor. I grabbed her up and held her to me trying to soothe her a little before I took a look at what was bleeding.<\/p>\n
I held Allie on my hip while I checked her chin, lips and teeth. When I looked in her mouth, I could see spaces where her front tooth and the one next to it had been. \u201dShe knocked her teeth out,\u201d I thought with a sinking heart.<\/p>\n
My little girl had only recently started looking like a little girl because her blond hair had grown down to her chin. She was so beautiful, so different from me as a kid with my ratty brown hair and brown eyes, that I was proud of her beauty. Now she was going to look like a jack-o-lantern for the next four or so years. It was shallow and vain of me to think this, but I admit that after \u201dthis must hurt like a mothereffer,\u201d the gap-toothed smile was my second thought.<\/p>\n
I calmed Allie down with Children\u2019s Tylenol and an ice pop, but I couldn\u2019t calm myself down. The blood wouldn\u2019t stop, and the sight of my daughter\u2019s bloody mouth and bruising chin made me cry every time I looked at her. I called my husband and he offered to come home early.<\/p>\n
Having toddler twins often means that you\u2019re never really able to focus on just one child. Nick gave me a firsthand look at the typical toddler\u2019s level of compassion (none at all). He didn\u2019t seem to know what the blood was, so he wasn\u2019t scared of it and just wanted Allie to pipe down so I could get him a popsicle too. He started whining and clinging to my leg, which just made me cry more because of all the things I needed right then, a toddler with no grasp of the situation was not one of them.<\/p>\n
At that moment I didn\u2019t feel like their mother, who was intelligent and strong and who would do her best to keep them safe no matter what. I felt like a teenage babysitter, who didn\u2019t even have the sense in her head to stop crying.<\/p>\n
I knew I needed another adult to shame me into getting my shit together, so I called my neighbor Mie, who is the definition of laid-back, and asked her to come over. As soon as she walked through the door, I started to calm down. I reverted back to my \u201dMom\u201d persona and explained the accident to her. The first thing she asked was, \u201dWhat did the pediatrician say?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201dThe pediatrician! Oh my God, I haven\u2019t even called her!\u201d I said, feeling more ashamed by the second.<\/p>\n
The pediatrician asked me if I\u2019d found the teeth that were knocked out, and I replied, \u201dNo, I haven\u2019t even looked for them.\u201d (Unfit mom!) She said I should go find them and bring them in. If I couldn\u2019t find them, that might mean that Allie had swallowed them, and then she\u2019d need x-rays because if she had any breathing problems, there was a chance a tooth could have lodged in her esophagus or lung. (WTF?!) Alternatively, if the teeth were knocked up into her gums (I didn\u2019t even know this was possible), she\u2019d need dental x-rays and a pediatric dentist to determine whether there had been damage to her adult teeth.<\/p>\n
Here I was worried about Allie\u2019s pain, my guilt and bad pictures for years to come, and suddenly there was a real medical problem to worry about.<\/p>\n
I searched the entire area around the coffee table and couldn\u2019t find either tooth. As we found out from the dental x-rays later that afternoon, Allie\u2019s teeth had actually been pushed back up into her gums. (My poor baby!)<\/p>\n
By that point, my husband had met me at the pediatric dentist\u2019s office and I had turned back into myself more or less. As the dentist began to tell me the new course of action to help the teeth come back down (no sippy cups, no straws, no pacifiers, no hard food), I knew I\u2019d easily forget this important information, and I began to take notes.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d get this part right, at the very least.<\/p>\n
(photo:\u00a0Shay Yacobinski<\/a>\u00a0\/ Shutterstock<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having twins can be the most amazing experience of your life. It can also cause you to wake up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21142,"featured_media":78109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[69,4423,7353,16,4818],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":3,"label":"Childrearing"}],"post_tag":[{"value":69,"label":"children's health"},{"value":4423,"label":"chilrearing"},{"value":7353,"label":"gallery"},{"value":16,"label":"parenting"},{"value":4818,"label":"Twinning"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/shutterstock_119741458.jpg",500,392,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Gloria Fallon","author_link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/author\/4f17238b0909d\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":3,"name":"Childrearing","slug":"childrearing","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"Get childrearing advice and read blog articles about how to raise your kids. Get advice for moms on how to be a good parent.\r\n","parent":0,"count":5343,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":5343,"category_description":"Get childrearing advice and read blog articles about how to raise your kids. Get advice for moms on how to be a good parent.\r\n","cat_name":"Childrearing","category_nicename":"childrearing","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":69,"name":"children's health","slug":"childrens-health","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":69,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":387,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":4423,"name":"chilrearing","slug":"chilrearing","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":4490,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":4,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":7353,"name":"gallery","slug":"gallery-2","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":7444,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2500,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":16,"name":"parenting","slug":"parenting","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":16,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1332,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":4818,"name":"Twinning","slug":"twinning","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":4886,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":34,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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