Uh-Oh!

Remember how I was just bragging about my 'gift'? Well my gift totally failed me! Or I failed my gift, not sure which!

This last week was half term and as a general rule I try to be pretty low key with the boys because all the places we'd normally go to are infested with much bigger kids (my 'gift' just tells me it's likely to end in tears). By Friday we were all incredibly stir crazy seeming as the weather had been poor all week long. Our local playgym is just on the next street but most people park on our street to go there (yes, that is annoying!) but it does mean I can tell how busy it is likely to be just by sticking my head out of the front door and looking down the street. Easy! I like easy!

On Friday our street was virtually car-less so I decided to wait until later in the afternoon and go let the kids run wild for a couple of hours. Luck seemed to be shining on us because for a holiday week it was very quiet with only a few older kids. Perfect. I sat and chatted with my friend and the kids happily played. Bliss!

An hour or so later two bigger kids were driving a plastic car down a slide into the ball pool. They thought it was fun. My 'gift' kicked in and I thought how incredibly dangerous it was, especially if they hit another child, this playgym is generally for the under 5's and these kids were about 8. I couldn't see their parents anywhere but I knew they weren't supposed to have any toys in the actual playgym let alone driving a car down a slide. That's just a recipe for disaster, right?

After a while I saw Thomas loitering because he wanted to go down the slide, not in the death slide manner the bigger kids were, just in the normal bog standard manner that I am sure we've all enjoyed from time to time.

The next thing I know Thomas is clambering on the car at the top of the slide and my 'gift' is in full force and I am off my chair in a flash. It is amazing how fast you can move when your child is in danger. I called to him and he turned to look at me with a huge smile on his face, brimming with excitement. I managed to tell him to get off because it was too dangerous, and he attempted to but when he moved the wheels slipped and he was off head first down the slide. I guess that'll happen when you put wheels in close proximity to a slide.

He got just about half the way down before he was launched off face down into the ball pool, the car landing eventually on top of him. (I say eventually because it seemed to take forever for me but it was in reality just seconds, endangered child time goes really really slowly.) I pulled the car off of him and gave those bigger kids a very brief piece of my mind. Thomas was really upset, mostly shocked.

Then I saw his arm. His forearm was bent exactly like a banana. It was horrifying. Clarity hit instantly and I knew it was broken. He stopped crying and just held his arm at the break.

I called Rob and got him to collect us and left (leaving Eli in the care of my friend, thanks Dawn for being so brilliant!), but not before making sure the parents of the bigger kids were fully aware of the results of their children's actions. It made me feel a tiny bit better.

At the hospital they confirmed a break of both the Radius and Ulna, not a pretty break either. He had to go to Surgery to have general anaesthetic to have it manipulated back into place. They gave him a healthy dose of Morphine which worked wonders. (I did enquire if it was available should I have another baby, I was told no due to the effect it'd have on the baby, but I think that's a small price to pay for that quality and speed of pain relief.) Sadly he couldn't go to Surgery until the next day due to an emergency trauma they had to deal with first. So he and I spent the night in a ward that hadn't been modernised since the hospital was built in the 50's. Not pretty. Considering I slept in my clothes I wasn't too pretty either or clean.

Saturday Morning he went to surgery and took it all in his stride (but like I have said before that is just Thomas). It is policy at our hospital that you're not allowed into recovery until the patient is fully conscious and so he woke up surrounded by strangers in an unfamiliar place but was unfazed. Rob went in to get him and he came out sitting up on a trolley all perky and totally happy. Then we just had to wait a million years to get discharged.

He has a cast on for the next 6 weeks from his shoulder to his hand. I guess that'll serve as a terrific reminder as to why I don't go to the playgym in the school holidays when it is infested with bigger kids.

I'll never cease to be amazed at how resilient kids are. I asked Thomas to do something yesterday, I can't even recall what I asked but I can perfectly recall his response:

"I can't, I'm not very well Mummy, my arm is broken!"

I expect I'll be hearing plenty of that these next 6 weeks.