Bentlee's first sledding adventure

I'm so behind on my blog and I know if I don't document this now it may never happen. I experienced my worst day of Parenthood today. For the last 8 months I've had this strange fear of falling while holding Bentlee. Today that nightmare came true and I'm pretty sure my baggy sweats had something to do with it. I was bringing Bentlee down the stairs this morning and I slipped and slid down several steps. I reacted quickly and thought I protected her well. One of my hands covered her head and the other held her body close to me. When we came to a stop and she started wailing, it didn't even really occur to me that she may have been hurt. I just thought I had scared the crap out of my poor daughter. I cuddled her on the couch while she cried and after about an hour I started wondering if something else could be wrong. For those that don't know my baby very well, she is close to perfect. Like, really. She's never fussed for more than minutes at a time and when she does fuss it's because she's tired. She was super clingy, every time I tried to put her down she held a death grip on my shirt. Kyle had been at the gym this whole time. I called my mom and told her what happened, and told her (not really jokingly) that I thought I had traumatized her. I still didn't understand how she could have been hurt when I had held her so close to me. I tried a couple things to calm her down including a bath which she normally LOVES but she just cried harder. The only thing that worked was to hold her really still. She kept dozing off but wasn't sleeping soundly and she would start fussing with the slightest movement one of us made. When Kyle got home he agreed something was wrong so I called her Dr around 12:30 and was told they could see her at 2:30. During that time we paid extra attention to where she seemed to be hurting and we realized it was her leg. She saw Lisa, (the PA and my favorite) and she sent us to the Outpatient lab for X-rays. Within moments of getting the X-rays, Lisa called to tell us there was a fracture in her femur, just above the knee. She said the good news was that it wasn't displaced, meaning she wouldn't need pins or surgery. Uh, what? Good thing I hadn't entertained that possibility. I had held it together pretty well until that phone call. Probably because I had been telling myself over and over, there's no way that fall could have broken my baby's leg. There's no way.

If Bentlee wasn't so amazing it would have been harder to dry my tears. Our baby is a TROOPER. She was definitely fussy this morning, but she did so good during all of her appointments today. With mommy holding her and daddy playing music in her ear, she almost fell asleep getting her cast on! So for that reason, and several more, I am counting my blessings. Not only do I have such a sweet and good-natured baby who is (usually) in great health, we have the best husband and father who took his whole, what was going to be a very busy day to be with us and then spent his evening shopping and cleaning our dirty kitchen. I am a very, very lucky girl.

But I still can't look at these pictures without feeling a little sick inside. And I keep thinking back to when I gave her a bath, and tried other ridiculous things to "calm her down" when the poor child had a fractured femur! Hello. Mother of the Year. I know it wasn't my fault, that I didn't purposely slip and fall down he stairs. I know I need to get over that and I will.

And, like Kyle suggested, I need to get some tighter sweats.