And the terrible Mother of the year award goes to.....

I'm not feeling too wonderful at the moment. Amelia and I woke up this morning...like any other morning. I walked her to her stander, gave her her breathing treatment while she watched cartoons, walked her back to the crib and got her ready for her breakfast feeding. And as I always do, I began to walk her to her feeding chair. But this morning, she wiggled and wriggled and lunged away from me and fell onto the tile floor smashing her mouth into the floor. There was so much blood. I was freaking out. I didn't know what to do. I called my Mom -- crying and yelling into the phone that Amelia fell on her face and she was crying and bleeding a ton. My Mom was so calm and cool (years of experience) and told me to dial 911. I called 911 and the extremely nice woman on the phone got all my info and told me help was on the way. Meanwhile, I put Amelia into her chair, put her cartoons on which calmed her down somewhat and got a clean towel to look closer at her. Her tongue was sliced apart about a quarter inch on the right side, in a cane shape. So horrible and bled sooooo much. I got a buzz at the door and it was two police officers from the 6th Precinct downstairs and our landlord, Bruce . I'm crying uncontrollably and running around like a madwoman trying to put together her tubing and extensions in the diaper bag, along with fresh clothes that aren't blood soaked. It turns out that one of the officers installed Amelia's car seat for us in the Lexus. They were all so incredibly kind, helpful and wonderful.

The EMS arrived and everyone helped us out to the ambulance. EMS asked which hospital we wanted to go to, so I told them NYU because all Amelia's docs are there. So that's where we went. I called Lia, Amelia's nurse, to tell her to meet me there instead of the apt. When we got to the ER they took us back very quickly.

The doctors looked at her and told me that they don't do stitches unless the tongue is completely sliced in half or if there's an artery involved. The bleeding had pretty much stopped by then and she fell asleep. so they wrote me a prescription for Amoxicillon (to stop any infections in the wound) and sent us home.

As an aside, I have to mention that I was asked, about 10-15 times, what happened? As I explained, "Well, I was walking Amelia from her crib to her feeding chair, like I do every morning-" "Is she ambulatory?" asked the ______. " "Well no" I responded, but it's carry over of therapy. We walk or crawl her, so she gets the sense that she isn't being carried everywhere-" "I see" says _______, with a look of skepticism on their face (actually, it's probably not skepticism, but I'm feeling so guilty, I think it must be). And I started thinking to myself "Oh my god. Are these people going to hold me accountable for this? Could I get into serious trouble for this? Could they take Amelia from me? Maybe I shouldn't be so honest about what happened..." and so on. How awful that we live in a world today, where on top of all the other things we have to deal with, this line of thought came barreling through my brain at a time where all I wanted was to hold my baby girl and take all the pain away.

Everyone has told me that "it looks worse than it is" (and it looks SO bad and SO painful, trust me) and "don't beat yourself up, this is what kids do" or "these things happen" and I appreciate the sentiments, but I had her. I really had her and it happened so fast. Every time something like this happens it sets us back so much further.

I have been thinking a lot lately about how far Amelia is from eating. Actual eating...and speaking. We are really no closer today than we were a year ago, two years ago. She's three. She fatigues after 3 swallows of less than half a spoonful of thickened baby food. She doesn't say one audible word or babble on her own. We dealt with not having a speech therapist for four months, heavy-duty pneumonia and now this. Again we are in the "no feeding" zone. It sucks.