Our Brush With Death

There is an old saying "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."  Well we definitely got a taste of that recently.  We wrecked the car on Sat  and were having a peaceful evening on that next Wed night (May 11th). We had just finished cleaning up dinner and opened up all the windows to get a nice breeze in the house since it was raining outside.  The windows in Texas go pretty much from floor to ceiling and they open from the bottom up. This is different from Utah where the windows are higher up and difficult for a child to reach.  We also live on the second floor and all the windows lead right onto the balcony except for hers which is right over a drive way for a garage.  Lydia ventured into her room and we followed her in.  Her bedroom windows were open and she was playing with the screen and the cords for the blinds.  I turned and told Gregory that that was not going to be okay and he said "yeah, we better close that window so she doesn't fall out."  We started walking to the window to close it (we were pretty close) when Lydia took a step and pounded on the screen.  Out went the screen and out went our baby.  I started to scream her name and we jumped up and ran down the stairs.  It was so surreal that we almost couldn't believe that it had just happened.  When we got to her she was crying and had a big scrape on her head but seemed to be moving okay.  I immediately called 911 (they took forever to answer) but just before they picked up, Gregory told me that she was moving her head okay and lets just drive her into the hospital. Our neighbors came out and started asking what was wrong and when we told them they all jumped into action, "who can we call? what can we do?" etc.  We asked where the hospital was and one lady offered to drive us there.  We followed her in our van and made the horribly long drive to the nearest ER.

When we got there they got us back pretty quick and then tried to stabilize her neck and head with some rolled up towels.  I was actually quite impressed with how calm I was in the ER.  I was singing to her and stroking her tummy, arms and legs, I would put my face right in hers and kiss her and tell her it was all going to be okay.  She did remarkable, such a strong little girl.  Soon after we arrived and she was "stabilized" Gregory's parents arrived.  They allowed his dad in for a quick minute to give her a very fast blessing and then they wheeled her out with me by her side to get a CT done.  Gregory stayed with his parents and filled them in on what happened.  He was too upset to tell my family so his dad had to make the phone call.  I don't know many details beyond that because I was with Lydia the whole time. When we got back from the CT we were able to see more family.  Lisa (Gregory's sister) had come at that point and checked in with us in the room and then spent most the time waiting in the waiting room.  It was so great to have people taking care of getting the word out and around.  Carolyn (Gregory's aunt) is in our ward so she took care of letting them know and between her and Lisa, word spread like wildfire.  Darlene his aunt and Gary his uncle also came to the hospital and waited until there was any news.  The Dr came in after a while and said that the CT looked like it was okay but he wanted a pediatrician's expertise on the decision.  They decided to transfer her to the Children's hospital in Dallas.  It took a while for the ambulance to get there to transport her and when they got there they had to re-stabilize her with proper equipment.  That was pretty heartbreaking to watch.  The poor thing was tired, scared and all she wanted was her mommy and I couldn't do a single thing.  They had to cut her shirt off (there were too many IV's and monitors to get it off) which made everything look worse then it was.

Once we got in the Ambulance, they turned on a movie for her and she did really pretty well.  The paramedics were AMAZING and made sure to tell me everything that was going to happen and not to worry about how many people were going to be in the room, that was normal.  Gregory and his parents came back to the apartment to get a few things and then met us up there pretty quickly.  I rode in the ambulance with her and when we got to the hospital, the staff was incredible.  Lydia hardly even cried because they were so quick with things and very efficient.  Not even 2 minutes went by when they cleared her to be released from her supports.  They took the baby neck brace off and unstrapped her and let me hold my baby for the first time in hours.  Lydia was then quite amused with everything that was going on.  The Dr's told us that they are pretty sure she's fine but they wanted to look over the CT scan images to make sure.  So after a 2 hour wait and a very unhappy and tired baby, we were released from the hospital at about 11:30 pm.  She fell at 5:30pm and about 6 hours later she was released.  Pretty incredible!

The next morning when she woke up she couldn't walk.  We were nervous at first, but Gregory said that we should just wait a few hours and then see.  When she woke up later from a nap she was at least standing a little.  She was starting to walk after a few more hours, but was pretty wobbly and wanted to hold our hand.  Her foot was pretty swollen and we know she was very sore!  Poor thing!  For the first couple of nights after it happened she would wake up crying in the night.  I would run to her and she calmed down pretty fast.  She just had to know that we were there.  She has recovered like a champ and the scrape on her forehead is pretty much gone.  It might leave a scar but that is the lest of our worries.  She is now doing fantastic and you would never know that anything happened.  The next Monday my mom flew in to spend a few days with us because she was so shaken up and needed to hold her little grand baby. Tuesday I took her into a pediatrician and he said that she was fine.  Her improvement and progress is very encouraging.  We think she probably landed on her side because she was limping for about a week and her foot was so swollen for that long as well.  I gave her Epsom salt baths with some lavender oil a few times a day to help with the healing process.  The Dr said that she might  reverberate a little and she did.  She has been having trouble eating solid foods and only wants her bottle.  I let her have her bottle for a little while to help soothe her and now that things seem to be getting back to normal again, we get to wean her off the bottle.  She is definitely more cautious than she has ever been before.  It's interesting to watch her not dare to get off a chair when the day before the accident she wouldn't have thought twice about it.  For now, I praise Heavenly Father and the angels that caught her.  We definitely had a guardian angel looking out for us!

This was our little angel before everything happened.  She was dancing away without a worry in the world.

Her famous dancing moves!

 Here she is the next day!  Struggling to walk where she was running before.  She would get tired easily and then just sit down and scoot to where she wanted to be.  It was so sad to watch since she was a baby itching to walk and walked at 7 months old, then ran at 9 months old!

 The head wound!  It doesn't look very bad in the picture at all and it healed so quickly, but don't be deceived, it still looked bad the night it happened and the next day.

All day long she just wanted us to hold her and be close to her when she wasn't sleeping (which she did a lot of that entire day).  We were happy to oblige her since we needed to hold her close as well.