How to age ten years in half an hour

Last night I aged ten years.
This happened:

 Awful, I know. My beautiful little girl has her first battle scar in the making. What an evening it was! Naturally, it happened during the mad hour, when I was doing my best to get dinner underway so I could get the big kids sitting down. They were getting their crazy heads on and starting to mess around, playing chase and wrestling. So I started dinner early by putting the pasta on and heating up the leftover bolognese from the night before. Meanwhile, I'd spied a little mess of biscuit crumbs by the front door, so I was working on that while the craziness developed around me.

Then suddenly Miss P screamed loudly and came running over to me, clutching her head. I guessed that she'd been hit in the head by a flung-open louvre door, which is what they'd been playing with. Now, Miss P is a noisy little sausage, but this cry was different. It was REALLY loud and high-pitched. And instantly hysterical. You've probably heard similar at your place. You know the one, where you think, 'S*#t, something BAD'S just happened.'

Dreading what I was about to see, I lifted Miss P's hands away from her head and made the gasp sound that only a mother could make when she sees two gaping holes in her kid's head. And I do mean gaping. Weirdly, there were two separate gashes on her head, that were stacked vertically on top of each other with a gap between them. The top gash looked more or less superficial, but the bottom gash was really open, which made me instantly panic.

Meanwhile Mr B started freaking out with all the drama, screaming that he was sorry and worried about being in trouble. While I comforted Miss P, he ran up and down the stairs, completely hysterical. I grabbed a nearby tea towel and pressed it to her head to stop the bleeding. My heart was absolutely thudding. Both the big kids were screaming non-stop. Husband wasn't yet home, but would be any minute. Oddly, the twins just watched from their playpen, quite mesmerised by the unfolding scene.

I carried Miss P into the kitchen and grabbed my phone, turning off the boiling pot of pasta as I did so. There was no way I was going to attempt to get Miss P into the car, strap her in her seat and drive to the hospital, which I knew she needed. So I rang for an ambulance, which was a very difficult phone call to make with all the screaming from the kids. I managed to get my message through by shouting down the phone and getting my details out in between the screams. I kept trying to say, 'Look, it's definitely not as bad as it sounds! They're just really upset!'

With all the noise coming from our place, our next door neighbour came to check on us, instantly taking Mr B off for a cool drink to calm him down. Meanwhile, Miss P slowly started to quieten down as well.

 

Then poor Husband turned up, understandably a little taken aback by the scene. In all the mayhem, I still hadn't got round to calling him. The ambulance arrived directly behind him and the paramedics came into to assess Miss P. Everything was a lot calmer by this point, and Miss P's bleeding had stopped. The paramedics told us that she would need to have stitches, so off she and Husband went in the ambulance. 

After some cuddles with Mr B, we were soon back in business at the Laney House, though no one felt much like eating. I was completely distracted, walking from one part of the house to the other and then forgetting what I was meant to be doing.

Husband called regularly with updates. Apparently the bigger wound was down to her skull, which just killed me. Then he said they were talking about putting her under general anaesthetic to stitch her up. I hated the idea of this, hated not being with her. But thankfully we avoided the need for  this in the end, with the doctors deciding that gluing the wound would be just as beneficial.

The two of them arrived home a couple of hours later in a taxi and she more or less bounded out of the cab, with a huge bandage around her head, declaring that she was hungry. Mr B was very relieved to have her home, as we all were. They snuggled together on the couch to watch TV. The poor things, what an ordeal. They seem fine now. It is Husband and I still having the awful flashbacks to that wound!

All very distressing, but I am ok now. Just very busy gathering together all the cotton wool I have in the house to WRAP THESE KIDS UP IN.

Yeah, I know, I know, there'll be more of this to come. I've got three boys. There's going to be injuries. But does it get any less traumatising?

How about you? Have you been rocked by a major injury to any of your children yet? Any tips for me??