The Story Behind the Breaking News

As you may have read in my last post my little 16 month old baby has a broken left leg.  He fractured his tibia the night before Thanksgiving, and is now in a cast up to his thigh.  Here is the story behind the break...

The night before Thanksgiving hubby, Caleb, Bella and I traveled to my dads house to spend the night. We were planning on spending Thanksgiving with my family, and we wanted to stop at dads before we traveled to my hometown.  The night was spent eating dinner, and playing with Caleb.  He has a way of being the center of attention whenever we are around family.  I wonder why.  Anyway, my dads house has a lot of stairs in it.  He has a set of steps that lead upstairs, and then two sets of two stairs that lead to the lowest level of the house.  Needless to say Caleb was obsessed with going up and down these.  The only problem is he is not quite sure how to go down properly yet.  It was making me a nervous wreck, and I swore that he was going to break a bone. 

As the night went on it was well past Caleb's bedtime.  My sis (Auntie K) wanted to take Caleb upstairs and snuggle with him to get him to sleep.  Hubby and I sat in the lower level watching TV, and after a while we heard this god awful loud bang, and heard our baby SCREAM.  We both immediately jumped up and ran to other room.  There we saw my sis holding Caleb, and sitting on her butt at the bottom of the stairs.  Caleb was screaming so hard, but at the time we just thought it had scared him.  She had lost her footing and slipped down two stairs on her butt.  We laughed about how bad her butt was hurting, and hubby and I took turns calming Caleb. 

Caleb finally fell asleep, but he just kept waking up screaming.  We of course blamed teething because he was cutting two teeth at the time, and there was no outward damage to him.  No bruising, no swelling, no cuts etc. We honestly thought he was perfectly fine.  That night was awful. Caleb would not sleep unless he was on top of us, and he barely slept then.  I gave him some Motrin for what I thought was teething pain and he finally fell asleep for a few hours.

The next morning I got up with my sisters, ate breakfast, and talked with them while Caleb slept in.  We were planning to leave for my hometown for Thanksgiving dinner, but I was letting them catch up on sleep.  After they woke up Caleb ate breakfast, and then I put him down to play.  Only he would not stand at all.  He would just scream.  I at first thought he was just being clingy.  However, once I realized that he would not even chase the "kiiii" (kitty), I started watching him.  Every time I would put him down he would hold up his left leg and scream.  He would not try to crawl because of the weight that he had to put on that leg.  Hubby and I frantically watched him, and decided that we had to go to the ER to figure out what was wrong.

My dad lives in a very very small town with no hospital.  Therefore, we decided to make the hour 1/2 drive to my hometown with Caleb and go to the hospital there.  Once we arrived they took us back to a room, looked at his leg, and then had us try to get him to move around.  FAILURE.  They gave him some Tylenol and then took some x-rays.

The doctor soon came into the room and said "yea, I understand why he does not want to walk on that leg".  I immediately asked if it was broken and he shook his head yes.  He took us to see the x-rays, and then we talked about our plan on action.  They splinted and bandaged his leg there and told us to make an appointment with an orthopedic specialist in a few days to have an actual cast put on. 

I could not believe my baby had a broken leg.  I have never even broken and bone, and he is under two and already in a cast.  The rest of the day was pitiful.  Caleb cried all through dinner, and was so clingy. He was so upset because he was not able to move around, and you could just tell he was frustrated. Hubby and I both had less than one full plate for our Thanksgiving dinner. 

Caleb is now in a cast for about 2 more weeks.  He gets it off on Dec 23, and I am so excited about that. He has learned to crawl with it, pull up, and take a few steps (although this looks really awkward).  I still plan on taking a video of it.  He also uses the cast as a weapon while having his diaper changed.  Oh, and thankfully the cast is waterproof. When he had his splint we had to sponge bathe him, and that was horrible.  However, now he can still enjoy his long baths.  Thank God, because today he had a huge blow out in his diaper, and poop crusted onto his cast.  It took me a good 30 minutes of scrubbing that thing in the tub to get it cleaned. 

Oh remember how Sydney broke her leg a few months back?  Yep she is still in a cast so we now have 2 broken bones in our household. (sorry it won't let me flip this picture)



This may be a long December bloggy friends. 

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