Down, But Not Out

Split Lip, originally uploaded by cheryl.

All in all, we've been really lucky when it comes to our boys. They've not had any serious injuries beyond the usual cuts and scrapes and bruises of childhood. We won't talk about the time Sawyer tried to put an M&M up his nose. That doesn't count. Connor had one notable tumble down a couple of stairs in our last house, but it resulted in only a cut and a rather large knot on his forehead. Xander hasn't had anything serious enough to recall.

Generally speaking, there haven't been any serious issues.

Sawyer tried to change all that tonight. The boys were playing together in another room, so we're not sure exactly what happened. All we know is Sawyer made an unusual sound for him and then the next thing we know Connor is coming over to tell us all about the blood.

Lots and lots of blood. Scary amounts of blood. Bright red and everywhere.

It took a while to wipe it up enough to figure out where it was coming from. His whole mouth and face and a large part of his shirt were covered in bright red blood. He wasn't screaming, but he was looking rather pitiful and very much wanting to be held.

Turns out he was playing and either fell (or was pushed) down pretty hard on his face. When he hit, his top teeth dug into his lower lip. There were three serious gashes in it, and it was bleeding a lot.

We contemplated stitches, because one of the cuts was pretty deep. But we weighed that against the long wait (after hours, so a trip to the ER would be in order), having to physically restrain him while someone worked on him, and then having to fight him to leave them alone once they were actually in.

Luckily for us, Grammy is a practicing ER nurse and was in the area. She stopped by to take a look, and told us he would probably only get one maybe two in the center cut. And that decided it. One stitch was not enough to put any of us through that ordeal, especially Sawyer.

Right now, it's scabbed over and starting to heal. The trick, of course, will be the same as if we had opted for that single stitch. Now we have to get him to leave the scabs alone long enough to truly heal.

So the bad news is he's got a pretty seriously split lip. The good news is that he's healing and doesn't seem terribly affected by it. Only time will tell whether he will be able to leave it alone to finish healing, or whether he's going to have a scar to show for the trouble.