Making Pancakes for Mommy
A week from yesterday I got up early on to make teach our helper Tri to make pancakes. I thought it would bless Jess to be able to have them that morning since she does such a fantastic job taking care of our son 24/7 while I teach, prepare, or lay around the house. I am blessed to have such a wife.
All was going well with the pancakes. Tri had caught on pretty quick (as she does with all the meals we teach her) and we were ready to move the show out of the kitchen and into the dining room. Since I wanted to be particularly kind to Jess that morning, I had taken Jeremiah with me and had him set up in his high chair in the kitchen while we cooked. Now it was time to move him.
Dad Drops the Ball… er, Boy
The normal procedure at this point would be to take him out of his high chair, set him in the dining room, retrieve the high chair and reinsert him thus. However, I skipped all of those steps and in all of my Dad wisdom, picked him and his chair up at the same time. I had a good handle on the tray of the high chair, of which until this time I thought was permanently attached to the rest of the chair, and began to move him. And then the tray came off.
What happened next breaks my heart everytime I think about it. Jeremiah, still safely buckled in his high chair, toppled to the tile floor face first from about a meter off the ground. I screamed for Jessica. We picked up Jeremiah and there was a fountain of blood coming from his mouth. At closer inspection we discovered that one of his top front teeth had been broken in half to look more dagger like and the other had jammed up further into his gums.
A Trip to the Hospital
We cleaned him up and took him to the hospital. First we went to pediatrics, who sent us to the emergency room. They put some ointment on his gums to stop the bleeding and then sent us to the second floor to see the hospital dentist. He looked for a second, prescribed some antibiotics and some pain reliever and told us to come back in three days. Then charged us only $10 for the whole visit.
After three days we returned to the dentist who briefly looked at his teeth and then explained that there was nothing that could be done. Eventually those teeth would fall out and be replaced by his adult teeth. Until then, he would just look a little less refined. By the time of the appointment, and even more at the time of this post, the tooth that was jammed up into his gums has come down on its own about 75%. We are hoping that within a few days/weeks the swelling will subside and maybe it will even come down some more. Our prayer is that the tooth is still alive and will not fall out.
A Sad Dad
So I feel like a terrible father. I know that kids get hurt sometimes and that is fine. I can deal with that. What is a bit harder to bear is that I was cause for his injury. I don’t want my children (Silas should arrive within two weeks) to ever be harmed because I was being careless. Lord, forgive me.
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Oh, Evan. Accidents happen. Don’t be so hard on yourself!
[...] least if our eldest, the Monkey, arrives into adulthood without any teeth of his own. Either by my mishaps or his own, he seems prone to [...]