Trip to ER

Late Saturday afternoon, Emma and I were home doing some potty training exercises while Andrew was at the FD. We were practicing walking back and forth to the potty from the family room. Emma wasn't exactly a willing participant so I was leading her by the hand. She did the "my legs won't work anymore" thing and collapsed to the ground, and I pulled her up by the hand to get her to stand up again. We then went to the potty and to get her off I pulled her by the arm again. Nothing aggressive, just the way I normally pull her off the potty with only one hand. There was a lot of crying going on but I didn't think it was because she was hurt, until I realized she wasn't moving her left arm. I tried to get her to hold my hand but she couldn't. I asked her to reach for something and her arm wouldn't budge. Then I started to get worried. What did I do to her? Did I dislocate her arm? break her arm? I felt around her arm to see if it felt like anything was out of place, everything was ok there. Her arm didn't look disfigured or anything, but she still wouldn't move it.

By this time she was calm again (as long as the arm didn't move) and was requesting to watch Barney. We took a couch break and a "what the heck am I going to do" break and then I decided to call Andrew. How do you tell your husband you just hurt our child? So I called him and said "I hurt Emma". Of course probably not the best thing to say, and then I started balling (not the best thing either). I didn't want him to think that I killed her or anything and I wanted him to know it wasn't intentional either. He was so supportive and just listened to me, which is what I really needed. Then he told me to pull it together, since I was scaring Emma, which I really needed too. But I felt like I couldn't cry until I talked to him. Crying to just Emma would have meant that I wasn't being the parent that she needed me to be. I think that goes back to the whole working in an emergency job, but anyway. We decided to head up to the FD to have him look at the arm.

We got there and the arm was the same. Still couldn't move it but everything else looked fine. Andrew suggested that instead of going to the ER we go to urgent care. Great idea! Except we got there 15 minutes too late and they were already closed! Grrr! So then we had no choice but to go to the ER. We waited about 30 minutes and were called back. The nurse asked what happened, and I started to explain the whole situation. The minute I told her that Emma collapsed to the ground while I was holding her hand the nurse said "oh, she's got nursemaid elbow". I later came to find out that nursemaid elbow is a nice term for dislocation. So, I dislocated her elbow! Great! I guess that puts me out of the running for the mother of the year award!

The doctor came in right away and said that it wasn't any big deal and that she is fine. I'm like this is great but she still can't move her arm. So the doctor took Emma's elbow in one hand and her hand in the other and said she would cry and then moved her hand back and forth. Immediately after she was done Emma moved her arm around like nothing ever happened and stopped crying. It was AMAZING! We then got a popsicle and some motrin and were on our merry way. So far DCFS hasn't called (phew) and Emma doesn't appear to be traumatized by the whole situation.