No Room For Panic

I must admit, I have been a bit terrified of the quickly approaching summer.  No school and no breaks for mommy, four kids to entertain, all day, every day.  I know, what’s to be scared of right?!  On the up side, I remind myself since last year, Brent has started his medication, Sophia is talking, Gabriel is more independent, and Kaden is becoming a great helper.  There is real hope I might survive.

With these thoughts buoying my newfound courage, I decided to finally brave taking all four kids to the park by myself.  My biggest challenges going to the park revolve around Gabriel’s complete lack of fear and Sophia’s absolute lack of foresight.  I am often torn between keeping Sophia from jumping off the highest part of the play structure, while preventing Gabriel from climbing any further up the side.  Needless to say, doing it by myself has heretofore seemed a bit crazy.  However, with a full summer looming, I put my big girl panties on and made the leap.

I decided to take the kids to one of our local parks that has two small play areas.  My goal was to reduce the distance from the top of the play structure to ground, as much as possible, in case one of my darlings decided to Super Man it over the side.   In addition, I decided to go early and beat the rush, hoping to also eliminate the worry of losing one of them in the crowd.  We arrived at the park at 10:30am on a Saturday morning and I was pleased to discover it was completely empty.  It was perfect.  The kids played together and stayed together.  I was able to keep an eye on all of them without difficulty and found both Sophia and Gabriel able to traverse the ins and outs of the play structures quite safely.  Success right?!

Yep, until I turned my head to coax Sophia back from the swings and heard Kaden start to scream.  Knowing something pretty bad had happened, I did a quick head count, saw Sophia, Gabriel and then found Brent standing next to Kaden as I ascended to the platform of the smallest play structure.  I deduced pretty quickly that Kaden had been climbing on or up the middle pole of the structure (did I mention not five minutes before I told him not to do this?) and had fallen off and hit the back of his head.  When I got to him, I could see the blood pouring down the back of his head onto his shirt.  Kaden had just pulled his hand from the back of his head to find it completely covered in blood and started to really freak out.

These are the moments you never forget.  Standing on top of a play structure at the park with your kid bleeding profusely from a terrifying head wound, looking around you for help and wondering where Mom is to jump in and fix it…And then it hits you like a tons of bricks and you realize, “Oh Crap,” I am the Mom.  In that moment, there was no room for panic.  I instantly went into my calm, we will fix this, mode and got to work.

So there I stood, with blood pouring out of Kaden’s head, wondering what to do first.  At the same time, I was pretty sure Gabriel had just capitalized on my distraction and stolen the car keys from my pocket.  In addition, I had lost sight of Sophia and Brent was looking at me like he might be as traumatized as his big, bleeding brother.  Knowing I needed to stop the bleeding, crossing my fingers that I would be able to track my kids and keys down later, I helped Brent strip off his shirt and used it to staunch the blood.  Using calm words and lots of reassurance, I escorted Kaden and Brent off the play structure to a nearby bench.  I then tracked down Gabriel and Sophia and told everyone we would be going back to the car.  I figured the safest way to get a good look at Kaden’s head would be to get everyone strapped into their car seats where they would be safe and unable to wander off.

Of course, my fabulous park was also the one with a nice long walk from the parking lot to the playground.  We set off with a half naked Brent, a bloody Kaden holding a shirt to his a head, myself attempting to help and carry Gabriel at the same time, and Sophia trying to take off back to the playground.  I made Brent hold Sophia’s hand and finally put a struggling Gabriel on the ground.  At last it felt like we were making progress when Gabriel saw a dog and took off in the opposite direction.  Needless to say, I gave chase and when we eventually made it to the car, I was one happy Mommy.

I strapped Sophia, Gabriel and Brent into their car seats, turned on the movie (thank God for DVD players) and was finally able to focus on Kaden.  After convincing Kaden head wounds bleed a lot, that he had lots of blood in his body, and that his body would make more blood to replace what he lost, I proceeded to clean the blood off our hands and attempted to clean his wound.  Not surprising, considering how much blood he had lost, I determined pretty quickly that we would be visiting a doctor to get this owie fixed.  After a quick ride home, some more head cleaning, lunch, and a call to Daddy and Nana, Kaden and I were headed to the emergency room where he received three staples to close what turned out to be a gaping hole in his head.

One week later, staples removed, the kids and I were back at the park.  No, I did not give in to panic and I refused to give in to fear.  Since then, we have made more than one trip to the park with Mommy by herself.  The good news is, we have not had to visit the emergency room again.  I am thankful every day since, that Kaden’s injury was not worse and that I was able to remain calm in a crazy situation.  Sometimes, when you are the Mom, there is no room for Panic.