And Then I Went Crunch

Yesterday, Delphinium and I were getting ready to go have dinner with my mom. We went upstairs to change into fresh clothes, came back down, and then realized we'd forgotten baby socks. For the 400th time that day, we trudged back up, grabbed a lovely pale green pair with colorful spots, and headed back down again. About half way down the stairs we ran into trouble.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what went wrong, but all of a sudden I was tumbling. You hear stories about the inborn impulse to keep the baby safe, and I can say that it is true. With no actual thought involved, she ended up on top of me even though I'd been carrying her on my hip. For myself, I landed on my back and tailbone and then slid several steps before coming to rest near the bottom. Somehow a wall hanging came down too, so there was quite a little pile of me, baby, hanging, and socks.

I wanted to just lay there for a moment and catch my breath, but I really, really needed to know that the baby was okay. She did not seem to be anything other than startled, but I still patted her down and checked all over her head and especially her eyes to look for damage. Seeing nothing wrong, I picked her up and moved her down to the couch so I could undress her and do a further check. Nothing appeared wrong, but she was still crying and crying. Finally I realized that I was probably making horrible grimaces at her, so I tried smiling instead. Sure enough, she started to hiccup and sigh instead of screaming. Within a few minutes, she was her normal happy self.

I was not my normal happy self. In addition to various scrapes and tweaks, my back side was screaming. My tailbone got the worst of the experience, and sitting down was extremely painful. I called my mom, and she arrived about an hour later. That was very good news since she was able to take the baby. Within a few hours, I had a visit from Mobile Medicine, and they said my tailbone was either bruised, sprained, or broken, but it didn't really matter which since there's no treatment for any of them. Today I'm feeling a bit better, sitting on a boppy, and taking ibuprofen. M says it happens to everyone sooner or later. The lesson of the hour is to use the handrail EVERY SINGLE TIME.