Not Your Typical Sunday

This past Sunday, right after feeding the girls their lunch, Paul and I decided to eat later, so like we always do, we strapped Claire into her booster seat. These seats are very secure - as you can see, attached to the chair in two places, and they have the option of either having the tray attached, or just using the adult table as the eating surface. No differently then usual, we took the tray off and scooted Claire right up to the table to sit with us while we ate.

Not five seconds later, as I was going outside to get Caroline to put her in her chair, and as Paul was finishing putting together his sandwich, we both hear a loud crash, and immediately in the back of my mind, I instinctively knew what had happened, though hoping it was not so. I ran back into the house just as Paul was running towards Claire, only to find that Claire had pushed off the edge of the table and completely toppled herself strapped into the chair backwards onto the tile. When we raced in, we see the chair like this, only with Claire in it and her head resting on the tile. We do believe that the seat saved her life because had she fallen out of it without being strapped in, she may have hurt her neck or spinal cord.

Thankfully, she began screaming, but about five minutes later, became limp and turned white. At that point, I began racing out to the car as Paul loaded up Caroline. We raced to the nearest ER, but the drive there was the worst part of the day. Claire kept fading in and out of consciousness, and I thought many times that we were losing her. Once we finally arrived at the ER, they checked her over and did a CT scan on her head. After a few minutes, the doctor peeked into our room to let us know that she had indeed fractured her skull and an ambulance was going to take her to Texas Children's in the Medical Center.

Obviously I didn't have (or really want) my camera at this point, but the saddest and scariest thing I've ever seen was my own daughter sitting in her car seat strapped to a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance. That is NOT a sight I ever want to see again. I rode with her, nearly throwing up myself because I was so upset and nauseated, and we finally arrived at the hospital.

After a while of waiting and seeing the ER doctor, we finally saw the neurologist, only to have him tell us that the fracture was very tiny and she would be just fine. He said that it takes about 2-3 months to heal, so we have to be very careful with her while it's healing, but told us we could go home that night. I was paranoid to have her sleep that night because I didn't want her slipping into unconsciousness again, but God saw her through the night and we all woke up much happier.

Claire is doing very well now - it doesn't seem like anything even happened, and she's not even fazed by sitting in her chair again. She has a nice bump on the back left side of her head, but there is no bleeding or even bruising at this time.

We are so thankful for our Claire - there is nothing like a hospital visit to the ER to put your priorities into perspective. I thank God for my girls every day, but now, I'm more thankful than ever. Claire is my sunshine and I'm so happy that God has taken care of her.