Birdie: First Blood
When you're dealing with a baby, there's a certain amount of bodily fluid that just comes standard in the deal. Urine, poop, drool and spit up have all turned up in quantity. It was only a matter of time until we added blood to that list, fortunately in a way that was dramatic but not harmful.
On Thursday afternoon M brought Birdie downstairs. I asked what the mark on her forehead was, assuming that it was a mark from her resting her head on something. As M was looking at it, I noticed that Birdie's right ear was bleeding, which set off all sorts of excitement. As best as we can tell, she somehow managed to stick her middle finger in her ear and scratch herself, fortunately on the outside ear and not inside her ear. This scratch, like many head wounds, bled a whole bunch, and she had smeared blood on her forehead along the way as well as having blood under her fingernail. The location of the scratch made it a huge pain to apply pressure to it, so it took a good 15 minutes of us juggling a squirming baby for it to scab over.
Her sharp nails have been a recurring problem for scratching both herself and us. We clip her nails regularly on bath night (currently Mondays), so it's not like the they were particularly long on Thursday. It doesn't look like there was a bug bite or anything that she broke open, she just managed to get her finger in just the right spot.
For all the excitement that this caused, it won't even leave a mark. Her first major cut actually left a more permanent mark on her. During the C-section the scalpel caught her head a tiny bit and left a small scar on her head. Even at birth it was already beneath her hairline, and now you can barely see it through her ridiculously thick head of hair, so she doesn't have a Harry Potter style visible scar. If I didn't know exactly where to look I'm not sure I'd be able to find it at this point. Still, in the hospital the scabbed over cut was very visible. She's officially 1/3 of the way to my total of 3 permanent scars.
On Thursday afternoon M brought Birdie downstairs. I asked what the mark on her forehead was, assuming that it was a mark from her resting her head on something. As M was looking at it, I noticed that Birdie's right ear was bleeding, which set off all sorts of excitement. As best as we can tell, she somehow managed to stick her middle finger in her ear and scratch herself, fortunately on the outside ear and not inside her ear. This scratch, like many head wounds, bled a whole bunch, and she had smeared blood on her forehead along the way as well as having blood under her fingernail. The location of the scratch made it a huge pain to apply pressure to it, so it took a good 15 minutes of us juggling a squirming baby for it to scab over.
Her sharp nails have been a recurring problem for scratching both herself and us. We clip her nails regularly on bath night (currently Mondays), so it's not like the they were particularly long on Thursday. It doesn't look like there was a bug bite or anything that she broke open, she just managed to get her finger in just the right spot.
For all the excitement that this caused, it won't even leave a mark. Her first major cut actually left a more permanent mark on her. During the C-section the scalpel caught her head a tiny bit and left a small scar on her head. Even at birth it was already beneath her hairline, and now you can barely see it through her ridiculously thick head of hair, so she doesn't have a Harry Potter style visible scar. If I didn't know exactly where to look I'm not sure I'd be able to find it at this point. Still, in the hospital the scabbed over cut was very visible. She's officially 1/3 of the way to my total of 3 permanent scars.