Weeping Willow April 17, 2012

It happened before so of course it was destined to happen again. You may recall my earlier blog, Willow: First Blood… well, now we have had the Second. I think two ‘blood’ incidents within 15 months is pretty impressive but of course I doubt that stats are held on these kinds of things… moving on.

Charlotte was trying on clothes trying to evoke an opinion from yours truly when tragedy struck… the zip of her coat snagged on the frill of the jacket. She couldn’t get it off, and so I tried to help. Unfortunately Willow chose this time make sure the attention was strictly back on her.

Instinctively we both looked toward Willow (while trying to unzip) only to see her falling backwards seemingly from holding onto the chair (she has been walking for some months now so it was a little odd for her to ‘fall’ – I blamed it on that old classic that she was ‘too tired’).

I slowly moved toward her and picked her up, reassuring her that she was okay, of course in that moment, she was far from okay. We noticed a little blood in her mouth as she screamed as only she could and Charlotte quickly sourced a tissue to soak up some of the spillage. But the blood (and the crying) didn’t stop… soon her mouth was full with blood. My exterior was calm, my interior was growing concerned. All her teeth seemed in place (albeit now with a red tinge) and her tongue seemed all in one piece so where was she bleeding from?

It was near bath and bed time so we took her upstairs, still trying to stop the bleeding and absorbing as much of the blood as possible. A trickle or two of blood decided that the mouth was too full and so came out of her nostrils… quite disturbing if you have never seen it first hand.

Fortunately, within another minute or two the bleeding had all but stopped and we were left with a sobbing, blood stained daughter with a split superior labial frenulum (don’t worry, I had to look up what it was called). It was at this moment in time, looking at my precious little girl with red smears all over her face that I thought, ‘this would make a horribly lovely picture’… but the moment passed without a dash for the digital camera. Instead I took the lovely shot that you see now, the discarded blood tissue… the only memory of yet another injury of which I’m sure there will be more in the coming years.

I like a blog to have purpose, a side from just story sharing. Can I give you any nugget of information that will make you avoid such ‘disasters’? No… we all know that something will happen to them, unless of course we surround them with a literal bubble. Can I give you a wonderful way of dealing with a mini-crisis? Not really… so what do I give you? What do I end this blog with?

“Improper use of zips can delay the response to incidents, take your time doing them up and undoing them. Remember, only a fool disobeys the check-then-zip rule” The Zip Society www.tzp.org.uk … of course, perhaps you could just use poppers and Velcro, that’d work too…