The Broken Toe Catastrophe

I always imagined that I would be a super great helicopter mom, monitoring my small children’s every moves.  My children would understand what it meant to be careful.  The last thing my children would ever have on my watch is a broken bone or any kind of severe injury.  Well, here I am with my 18 month old daughter who now has a humongous cast on her foot because she broke her toe.

I was a very cautious child, and I’m still a pretty cautious adult.  Never in my life have I broken a bone or required any kind of serious medical attention for any other kind of injury.  I would have hoped that gene would have been passed down to my children, but that’s not the case when it comes to my middle child Harper.  My oldest child Owen who is 3 years old has always been extremely careful.  Still to this day, he is too terrified to go up inside the playscape at McDonalds or go up any kind of tall slide.  I guess you can say I had it pretty easy when it came to making sure he was physically safe.

Harper has definitely proven to be my wild child.  From the day she started walking (which pretty much went immediately to running), I knew that she would be the one who would one day end up in the emergency room or urgent care for some self-inflicted injury.  It only took a few months after she was really mobile, but here we are!

I recently had my 3rd baby a little less than two months ago.  As we started bringing out all his baby contraptions and swings and such, Harper quickly learned how to climb up in them all by herself.  If the tray is off the high chair, she’s climbing up in it.  If something is on the dining table that she can’t reach, she’s on the dining table.  Well just a few days ago as Harper was sitting at the table eating her snack (which she has been able to do for quite some time now), the chair somehow flips backwards with her in it.  As soon as I heard the crash, I went rushing in to pick her up and check for any injuries.  She was screaming and her pinky toe was purple and covered in blood.  It seemed pretty obvious that it was most likely broken.

After rushing her to the urgent care clinic, they did x-rays, washed the blood off, and did some other torturous things to my child for a span of 2 hours.  After the radiologist viewed the x-rays, they determined that the toe was broken.  We were then referred to a pediatric orthopedic doctor.  There, they put a huge cast on her foot and a special shoe to help her walk in.  One would think this would slow a child down a bit, but not little Harper.  It took her about a day to get pretty steady on it and now she is running around the house and climbing on things, just as crazy and dangerously as ever.  She has even mastered using her giant foot cast as a stomping mechanism if there are crumbs of any sort on the kitchen floor.  We are all pretty much terrified of her stepping on one of our toes or fingers with the giant monster of a foot.  Also, having a 6 week old around Harper is pretty scary as well and I am constantly having to keep him out of her path.  Tummy time has pretty much become non-existent for poor Charlie for the time being because I’m terrified Harper might trip and fall on him or knock him in the head with her foot.

Bath time has been really fun lately as well.  She has to wear the cast on her foot for about four weeks and the stupid thing can’t get wet.  Every time we bathe her (which is quickly decreasing in frequency due to the task being such an event) we have to wrap her cast in a plastic bag, put her in a baby bath tub, hold that leg out of the water and have one parent bathe her while the other wrestles her leg to keep it elevated out of the water.  Apologies to anyone who may smell my kid in the next 4 weeks.  Bath time is horrible.

All in all Harper has learned nothing from this experience and has if anything become even more dangerous than ever.  I look forward to 4 weeks from now, but until then I at least get to enjoy what is the cuteness of an 18 month old Harper in a big purple cast running around the house just as happy as ever.

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