Yesterday ws no different from any other in our house. The baby was up before 6 and the boys were down pretty close behind her. So by mid morning we were all pretty tired and grumpy. This m,eant that the boys just niggled each other at the slightest thing and my patience was wearing thin.
A quick snack and some juice to restore calm helped a little but only as a bandaid measure till lunch! By that time they had turned my lounge into a car park and Iron Man was at war with Spiderman and the hulk! There was a lot of carnage but no blood spilt (yet).
The first nursery run went smoothly and we got received an update on the infant chick along the road that had fallen out of it's nest last Friday. It is doing well - feathers starting to grow and it feeds on a little cat food every half hour! That is another blog entry though.
Before going out on the return trip to nursery I went to the bathroom. What did I find? Well no liquid soap in the bottle I had opened an hour before for a start! L had poured 750ml of liquid soap down the plug. I had been topping the bottle up a little every day with bubble bath until I had the chance to shop and it wasn't lasting long - now I know why!! Bar soap all the way for us now! So with L chastised and in the pram we headed out to collect J from nursery and then go to the shop for soap.
When we got home it was decided since it was nice we'd do a BBQ for tea. I put some potatoes in to bake and was just getting things gathered together to start the homemade coleslaw wheh I heard a scream. Dashing outside I found L face down on the ground under the table. He had been on the bench so I thought he'd just bumped his lip when I saw the blood. But this blood was on his back so there was no way it had come from his lip! Picking him up to check I felt blood running down my arm. Frantically trying to see where it was from whilst he was screaming all the time, I could tell it was his head but his hair is longer and it was hard to see as the back of his head was covered in blood. When I did find the wound it was huge. About an inch long and heading towards a good pinky finger nail wide. It was pouring. Grabbing a towel to apply pressure I was trying to get L to find the phone - we are always loosing the freaking cordless phone and can never find it when it matters. He struggled to find it but we did manage to find my mobile. But as per usual there was hardly any credit on it. I phoned DH to tell him to get home ASAP.
As there was still no luck on the home phone front and I now only had 3p on my mobile, plus the blood was still coming there was nothing else to do but call 999. This gash needed stitches. I explained to the operator what was wrong and why I hadn't gone via the NHS 24 helpline - they were ok with that. Besides if DH had been home I'd have taken him in the car to the health centre, but as it stands it is a 20 fast walk from here and I couldn't get hold of anyone to sit with J and F.
When J heard the sirens he told me he could hear a fire engine - I explained that it was an ambulance and that it was coming here. The para medics were great and when the looked the blood flow was slowing and I swear it was to the bone! Now able to look for the phone I finally found it. I tried a couple of folk to see if they could sit with the kids until DH arrived so that L and I could go in the ambulance to get his head stitched. I even tried my mother who was at work in the health centre, but she couldn't get away. As a last resort I tried my MIL - but I was sure she was still working too. But she answered and came.
When we got to the minor injuries unit L was very quiet but he was ok. The nurse cleaned him up and looked at his wound. It was bad but fixable with a tube of UHU! Ok so it isn't UHU that they use but it is a form of superglue and it seems to do the trick. By the time he was fully checked over, including his ears for internal bleeding his dad and siblings had arrived to collect us.
When we got back home I had a look at the table to see where he had hit his head, nothing obvious but part of it did have a few obvious splinters.