Head Full Of Staples

My last post had a picture of Nick and Nate sitting in the snow near the brook in back of our house. My brother Jamie made a comment about how they looked a little too close to the water, and how it made him nervous, and then went on to say being a parent would give him heart trouble. I would like to state, for the record, that the entire time I was taking pictures down by the brook - from ten feet away - I was shouting at the kids to move back. And we were down there for about fifteen seconds before I made us turn around.

Being a parent doesn't mean you don't feel nervous about your kids dashing their brains out. It means you are actually worried about things like that ALL THE TIME. I mean, EVERY WAKING MOMENT. And how you deal with it - be it to freak out four times a second about all the possible injuries that could occur, or to surpress and squash those feelings and smile while you drink a third glass of wine - well, that's up to you.

Tonight, as I was cooking dinner, Nathan hit his head on the corner of our fireplace and I had to take him to the Emergency Room. This is an injury both Steve and I saw coming. We saw it as soon as Nick learned to roll over. "One day he's going to smack his head on the corner of that thing" we said. And I tried to child-proof it for awhile. I tried covering it with pillows and the placing a huge baby gate in front of it. And eventually, as time went by and life went on and the kids got older, we learned to live with letting it be except for the occasional "Move away from there!" and "Stop jumping off that!"

So, I saw it happen. I saw Nate fall, and I saw him stand up, and I saw him start to cry as he ran to me, blood pouring down the back of his neck. Nicholas jumped in and did exactly what I asked him to do, running to get Steve, then running up and getting my shoes, and when he couldn't find Nate's shoes he got his own for Nate to wear. I was frantically trying to calm Nate while pressing an entire roll of paper towels on his head.

And once we got to the Hospital, once we checked him in and sat there, waiting for someone to look at his head, watching an hour's worth of cartoons featuring nothing but Fart Jokes, the Medical Practitioner put four staples into my baby's head. Staples. Not stitches. No needles and thread, but a staple gun. Into Nate's HEAD.

He was very brave. Other than crying when he hit his head, he was his usual stoic self, and only cried for a few seconds when the last staple went in.

I didn't expect the staples. I really didn't. And I supposed, in the long run, they are better than the stitches. They are stronger, it was faster to put them in. It's his head, so scarring isn't an issue... But still. It seems so barbaric.

And now, now what do we do about the fireplace corner? How do we stop this from happening again? Or is that anything we can even do? Sure, we can paste soft corner things onto every corner of our home. We can bubble wrap the entire place. Or we can freak out every time they boys move within two feet of anything sharp. Maybe the best thing to do is to hope that Nathan learned something, and that he will learn not to fling his body toward sharp objects.

I don't know what to do. I don't know how to be a good mother, here.