last night.

Last night, while I was making dinner, Rowan slipped in the shower.  We were downstairs, Steve in the dining room, looking at a board game and me in the kitchen, well, making dinner.  There was a loud bang, but I didn’t think much of it.  Sometimes, Rowan is noisy and I didn’t have much cause for alarm.  She came downstairs about 5-10 minutes later, dressed in her pajamas, and told me that she fell and hit the back of her head and that it hurt really bad.

Maybe it was because I had just talked to my mom about Rage of Angels by Sidney Sheldon earlier that day, or maybe it is because I am pregnant and more paranoid than normal, or maybe it is because I am just a crazy worrywart…whatever the case, I freaked out.  Whenever Rowan bumps her head, which doesn’t happen all the time, but does happen from time to time — what kid doesn’t bump their head now and then? — I always check her eyes.  I look to make sure her pupils are dilating, I feel for bumps, and I make sure that she can track my finger back and forth.  These are the things that my mom used to do to us and I feel that they are good benchmarks to make sure that nothing is wrong.  Well, I did that with Rowan and her pupils, while big at first, did end up dilating normally, her head felt okay, but, her eyes weren’t tracking my finger quite right.  Her right eye seemed to catch a little bit, when she was going back and forth.  I started to get worried.  I tried again, and it still looked to me like it was jumping.  I had Steve try, and he thought it looked normal, but I was convinced that he could not see the twitchy/jumpy tracking that I could see (and, I know that I really did see this).

I started to cry, and then Rowan started to cry and I had her all freaked out.  She ran upstairs and started bawling and I, in perhaps what was an overreaction, laid down on the floor and started sobbing.  I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to her.  I called my mom and she agreed that I should take Rowan in to see if she had a concussion.  OR WORSE.  I couldn’t help but think of Natasha Richardson, or any other random person with head injuries.  I tell you, head injuries are one of my big fears for kids.  This felt like OMG MY WORSE FEAR COULD COME TRUE.

So, I  got Rowan dressed in jeans, had her grab a stuffed animal and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (we are reading the HP books together, which is really fun), and told Steve that I was going to take Rowan to the hospital.  He was visibly upset?  frustrated? with me, but said that there was no way that I was in condition to drive myself, so came with us to the ER in downtown.  We got there, and I kept tearing up, thinking the worse, but had calmed down from my craziness when we were at home.

Luckily, the pediatric unit is considerably less busy than the regular ER unit, so we got in in a timely manner, and saw a doctor almost right away.  They performed all kinds of tests on Rowan – reflex, strength, et cetera; no CT scans or anything like that – looked into her eyes, had her track a finger up down and all around, and then looked into her eyes with the lights off.  They asked if she was dizzy, seeing double, sick to her stomach, feverish, and any of that.  She was not.  She was just fine.  And, thankfully, once they got a look at everything, they deemed that she WAS just fine.  Not a concussion, and certainly not anything worse than that.  They told me that the threshold for something to be “wrong” is usually four hours after the injury, and told me to keep an eye on her and peek in on her when she was sleeping to make sure that she was okay.  They also told me that they would rather a parent bring a kid in with nothing wrong with them, then sit at home when there is something wrong, but I felt a bit foolish and felt bad that I caused Rowan such grief and worry.  Not to mention the fact that I made Steve feel pretty bad, in that I did not trust him to be rational in the face of catastrophe (albeit, a catastrophe that I pretty much created).  I don’t regret taking her, at all, because her eyes did seem weird to me and I know that if something HAD been wrong, I could never live with myself if I hadn’t acted, but I realize that I did get a little theatrical in my worrying.

This morning, I woke up and went into Rowan’s room to snuggle with her and make sure she was okay.  She was definitely the same Rowan as always, and I was so thankful for that….I was even thankful for her lolly-gagging ways that make me late to work every single morning.

cats and bags

It is very hard for me to keep a secret about myself, when it is good news.  I am a private person (says the girl who is WRITING ON A BLOG), but if I am happy about something, it’s hard to keep it inside.  So, to keep a secret like I have been keeping for the past, oh, two months or so (and a little longer, if you talk about the intention to do this…) has been really hard.  At the same time, it is also hard for me to communicate happy little things, because I don’t like being the center of attention (AGAIN, says the girl who is writing on a blog).

Where am I going with this?  Well, yesterday, I let a cat out of a bag.  I let the world, or the people in my world, know that Steve and Rowan and I are expanding our little family.  I am pregnant and due at the end of January.  In six months from today, actually.  Happy three months, I guess!  I had already told a very few select people, to include a few close friends and my family, of course, but hadn’t told most people.  Yesterday, we had a work potluck, and my boss opened the door for me to tell my small little work group, and I did.  Of course, everyone was super happy for me and said all kinds of congratulations – I didn’t expect any different from my work family – but the whole time leading up to that, I was fretting and swear that I was almost going to have a heart attack because I was so NERVOUS about it.  Which is totally dumb, but there you go.

Then, I realized that there are literally hundreds of people out there, from relatives to internet friends to people from my hometown, that also need to know and I started freaking out about WHAT to put as my status on facebook.  Things aren’t official until they are facebook official, after all.  After fretting about that stupid thing for a few hours, I finally put up a status last night and officially let the cat out of the bag.  The world now knows that there will be one more little person in it come the end of January…or maybe February (but, let’s hope not!  Sheesh!).

And, all of this rambling is really to say that I can now talk about that here, too.