The Fish Pond: I Must Have Broken a Record for How Quickly My Own Stupidity Kicked In

First things first, E.W.J.(Guppy) was born Wednesday, Nov. 8 at 9:47 am, in a scheduled c-section surgery. He was 7 lbs. 10 oz., my smallest baby, and he is 20 inches long. He has a full head of fuzzy black hair, and looks just like his daddy. He and I both did fine with the surgery. I will post his birth story in a couple of days, when I get a chance to type it out.

We came home on Saturday, with BigDaddyFish, all three big siblings, and my FIL in attendance. That, too, is its own story.

But first, I must confess to something: It took me being home only slightly more than 24 hours for me to drop my newborn son ON. HIS. HEAD.

Yup. The kid wasn't a week old before his first ER trip. The doctor did a bunch of extra work inside after the c-section to put my insides back where they belong, and it has left me drained and unbelievably sore. Despite that, due to other health issues, I can't take anything stronger than Tylenol for pain, so I have been verging on delirium. Also, Guppy nurses constantly, and I hadn't had more than about 2 hours of sleep since coming home. Monday morning at about 5 am, I woke with a start as I felt my son slide out of my arms, and he landed in a crumpled heap on the floor of my bedroom. I LEAPED out of bed and had him picked up in about a nanosecond (keep in mind I can't really walk up the stairs by myself) and was screaming my head off and crying. He only made a token protest and then went back to sleep. BigDaddyFish jumped up immediately, too (think about his sleep issues here) and we checked Guppy out together. Now, in the few days I've gotten to know my son, I've learned that he hates being uncovered or undressed, but not much else bugs him. So, after a "What the hell just happened?" squawk, he realized he wasn't uncovered, so he went back to sleep. I wanted him to be screaming his head off so I knew he was okay, but he wasn't, so we got all the other kids up and trooped off to the ER. He had a CT scan, and a thorough neurological exam, and was pronounced perfect. I got to hear about all the times all the mothers there dropped their kids on their heads (it seems this is fairly common), and I was ordered to sleep while they took care of the baby. In response to "Chief Complaint" on their admit form, I wrote "Mother is a Moron."

He is fine. He was later checked again by the pediatrician, and not only deemed perfect, he had already gained back more than half of what he lost from his birth weight. We got lucky: the bed is high off the ground (he fell more than 3 feet), but the floor is carpeted with 1" padding underneath. He could have hit his head on either my bedside table or the stool I have to use right now to get in and out of bed, but he landed squarely in the SIX INCHES in between the two. The good Lord was looking out for us then, that's for sure.

And now, the phobia about the edge of the bed that I haven't had since I convinced myself as a teenager that gremlins were NOT coming out from under the bed to eat my toes while I sleep is back with a vengeance.

This mother of four stuff is hard.