One of the problems with being a working mother is those damn phone calls. The kind that stop your heart.

“Hey, it’s me. We have…a problem.” Meanwhile, I hear Button screaming in the background.

You can strap the baby in the bouncer, but you cannot strap the bouncer to the counter top, and hers had fallen off with her in it.

This particular bouncer has a very sticky rubber bottom, so sticky that I can’t even move it when I try to wiggle it on the counter. So nobody’s sure how, in a split second while the nanny turned her back to put the bottle in the warmer, the bouncer tumbled off the counter onto the floor. The only thing we can figure is that maybe one of the base corners wasn’t all the way on the counter.

Anyway, I was relieved to hear Button crying, because at least that meant she was conscious. I grabbed my purse and headed home. Then came the next phone call.

“I’m having a hard time keeping her awake. Button. Button, wake up, sweetie. BUTTON. I’m trying to keep her awake in case she has a concussion or . But her eyes keep closing. Button, WAKE UP HONEY. YOU HAVE TO STAY AWAKE”

I drove up to the front and we piled Button into the car, with the Nanny in the back seat to keep her awake as long as possible. She succeeded until about 5 minutes before we reached the doctor’s office.

During the visit, Button was virtually inconsolable. The only time she stopped crying was when I held her tight and let her bury her head in my neck. But of course, that isn’t too conducive to doctor examinations or x-rays, so she was in hysterics during much of the visit, as well as the subsequent trip to the diagnostic center.

The x-rays were negative for signs of fracture or trauma, so we’re home now. She finally took a bottle (for the first time in 7 hours) and went down for a nap. She’s been asleep for an hour, but I have to wake her up every 15 minutes to make sure there aren’t any signs of head-injury-induced-oversleeping. She’s exhausted and if I know her, she’ll be asleep for much of the rest of the day.

Wish I could be too.

She has a nice bruise developing on her cheek, but it doesn’t appear that she hit her head anywhere else – at least, the doctor couldn’t find any additional lumps or indication of injury.

So if we don’t see anything unusual in the next 48 hours, we can assume everything’s . And breathe a huge sigh of relief.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Childcare, Daily, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.