The Night I Nearly Cracked My Head Open

We've all been there as new time moms. Your child cries in the middle of the night and you run down the hall to see if they are ok. You comfort, rock and sooth them and hope you can lay them back in their crib and they will fall back asleep as you tip toe out of the room and quietly crawl back in bed. When you are nursing, you do this several times a night. I'm so used to this...however I have not had to do this in 6 months-ish. I think I've heard a rogue cry every now and then, walked in there, put his blankie back on him and that was it.

Thursday night around 11:45, I was jolted up out of bed by J's high pitched screech. This scream was different in that it wasn't a cry indicating, "hey I'm up guys, you should be up too"....or just a discontent cry. It was an "oh my god something horrible has happened to me" cry, which set my feet running before I could even plant them safely on the ground then WHAM!!! I hit what felt like a brick wall. Knocked myself sideways for a minute while my face was in extreme pain, but I kept going like any mother would if their child was screaming from God knows what. Those kind of screams at that hour of the night can fill your mind with horrible thoughts, did he get his head stuck in a railing, did he finally fling himself out of crib, is a bug biting him, WHAT? I run in there, picked him up and sat down in the rocking chair to comfort him. He immediately calms down. So I figured it was just a night terror.

At that time I feel something dripping into my eye. Maybe it was J's tears. I feel another drip and think, is the roof leaking....then Hunky Hubs comes in the room and asks if he can do anything. I said, "sure do you mind taking J for a minute while I go to the bathroom"?

I head into our bathroom and see myself in the mirror and was shocked at all the blood smeared all over my face and the gash above my eyebrow. I had been rubbing my face because I was tired and I just smeared the blood everywhere making this little gash seem way worse than it was and since I'm always slightly anemic, I bleed more than normal. This is a picture after I cleaned up my face. I didn't think to take the picture for this blog post til afterward. My face is all puffy from sleep and a headache is creeping across my forehead from where I hit it.

I walk back in to J's room and tell Hunky Hubs I nearly split my forehead open. He of course can't see anything because its dark in J's room and he's still trying to get J back to sleep. I crawl in bed letting Hunky Hubs handle the situation, but moments later him and J are back in our room and he puts J in between us in bed. We lay there for a little while as J flails around everywhere, he sits himself up, then flops himself back down and several times he's done this, he's head butted me, and I really did not need that on top of what had just happened! After awhile he starts crying again, so I pick him up, go back in his room and start rocking him again....I lay him in his bed after awhile and the flood gates open with the most pathetic whimpering you've ever heard from a baby. I knew then it was going to be a long night.

We have successfully been able to lay J in the crib shortly after brushing his teeth and having his sippy of warm milk for around 4 months now...and he's slept through the night for about 6 months, shortly after he self weaned, so this was weird. I checked for a fever, I thought maybe he was too warm, so I changed him into a jumper, I changed his diaper...I put socks on his feet....I did everything I could think of to try and make him comfortable. But eventually he came back to bed with us, Hunky Hubs decides after awhile of crying that he is going to take him downstairs to rock him in his chair. I'm ok with this, I feel like I've been hit by a mac truck, I'm going to sleep. Eventually J must have made it back into his bed, because I hear him a little while later. Hunky Hubs said "forget this", and slept downstairs for the rest of the night. Ha Ha. I ended up repeating all the above scenarios all night long til about 4:30. That is when I said to myself there is no way I'm not at least getting a couple of consecutive hours of sleep. I laid J in his crib with blankie and teddy, said "sweet dreams", I shut his door, then turned off the baby monitor by my bed, crawled in bed while I hear distant wails....and they become even more distant as I drift off into sleepy land. I just had to let him cry it out this time....





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Posted in: CIO,cracked heads,crying babies,night terrors,sleepless nights