Stitches - Our first ER trip for an injury (probably not the last)

Well on a Wednesday night in February, my little princess got her first face stitches. You see I had just told her that she needed to go to bed and that is when she said, 'No, I need some popcorn." So she came down the stairs and proceeded to do a face plant on the popcorn tin on the floor. Then a stream of screaming and blood flowed freely, and Sophie came running down the steps. It looked almost like she had bitten all the way through her lip. I guess it was two separate gashes though, one on the inside and one on the outside. Sophie quickly called her brother Ricco to come and stay with Sampson since he was already in bed. So he came right up while we were putting Peach in the car, by then the blood had kind of stopped. Anyway we ended up at the ER and by the time we got back into where they first evaluate her, it was about 35 minutes. So that guy checked her out and then they gave us a bed to kind of sit on and wait for the doctor to check her out. So he comes in and says they should probably go ahead and stitch up the cut on the outside of her mouth. Great. By the way, I had been doing pretty stellar so far with the whole blood thing, for those of you that don't know, normally when I see blood I get a little queasy, but even with a mouth full of blood I was unfazed until we got Peach to the health care professionals. Anyway after the doc looked at her, another doctor or nurse (not sure which exactly), Kelly, came into do the procedure. So she showed Peach some of the thread and stuff (no needles) and put some topical numbing stuff on where they were going to stitch. But that was just to numb the area a little before the shot of local anesthetic they were going to give her. Anyone who witnessed the splinter incident of '08 knows how much she can fight when needles are around. Fortunately the hospital already knows how much little kids like to fight so they have a restraining device called a 'burrito'. The child is secured inside the 'burrito' before any sharp objects are displayed, and Mommy and Daddy can stay in the room or leave if need be. Well I had been doing good so far so I moved down to hold her little hand inside the 'burrito' while Mommy stayed close to her face. Then came the needle. She fought and yelled, it was almost comical except that there was no give either way. She didn't want that shot or anything to do with the needle and the doctor was going to give a shot, one way or another. She was yelling, 'I wanna go home', 'let me outa here', but the doc was stone cold to the little girl's cry and eventually after several attempts she got the area numbed. Peach kind of stopped fighting after that, and the doc proceeded to stitch her up. Once she got the first one in I figured she was pretty well home free and I guess I let my guard down because I got really light headed. That was the first stitch I had every actually seen going in, sure I've been stitched up 3 times, but they were all in the face and they always put a sheet over your face so you can't see what's going on. Probably a good idea in the case of a three year old, since they would get pretty defensive with the needles and what not. After that I sat down and didn't get to see the last two go in (no complaints from me), and after she was done Peach got a Snoopy Band Aid and a Popsicle. Then she wanted to call her Mimi and let her know that she got three stitches. Yeah that will always make the grandparents proud. Here are a couple of pictures so that everyone can share in our joy.

I guess she beat old Dad's mark, I was 5 before I ever got stitches. But I got 13, so she basically has 2 more years to get 10 more stitches. Hey, I wouldn't bet against her at this point.