maggie is fine again this morning

just a quick maggie update, she's fantastic, happily throwing cheerios all over the floor and banging her bowl. the bump on her head is gone, just a black and blue that's now yellow.
she was, however, up until 10:00 last night, which is about 3 hours past her usual bedtime. i don't know what was going on, but she screamed and cried whenever i tried to put her to sleep, so we just let her stay up. it got to the point that we were starting to worry, but i looked over the discharge instructions, and it didn't say anything about NOT sleeping, just being too sleepy. it did mention irritability, but she's cutting some teeth, so we thought it was probably that. maybe it was a headache that got worse when she was laying down. either way, i looked it up online and the internet said to only worry if a headache didn't go away with tylenol. so, we gave her some, and she fell asleep within minutes. it was probably just the teeth. maybe a headache, but she's entitled to one of those, it really was quite the bump.

i guess i will quickly fill in in case anyone who is reading this didn't hear--maggie fell and hit her head on the floor (the floor in the dining room, which is really hard). she cried and got a bump, but she also started throwing up. she didn't actually get anything out, but she heaved and gurgled 3 or 4 times. throwing up after a head injury is one of those things you're supposed to call the dr for, so i called. the on-call dr. said after a head injury with throwing up, a child really should be seen, so that i should take her to the ER. this was 6:30 at night, so we were not happy with this information. oh, this was on wednesday though, the same day that natasha richardson died after her initially harmless-seeming head injury. i had JUST read an article about how people can seem fine after head injuries but their brain is silently bleeding and sweeling, and they can still be dead in hours. perfect timing, no?

so, long story short, we went to the ER and they did a neurological eval and she was fine (they were all impressed that she was walking, too). still, they wanted to keep her until it was 4 hours from the injury, because apparently the first 4 hours after an injury is a window in which damage can appear. i think they were all skittish about natasha richardson too. this was presbyterian and she was at lenox hill, but i think everyone in the world knew about it. also, i didn't ask how her being only 9 months old mattered, but i know babies are even more sensitive to brain injury than kids. i read online yesterday that under 6 months old is the real danger time though. most of that info was in regards to shaken baby syndrome though.

anyway, they woke her up at 10:30, did another neurological eval (looking at her eyes, took temperature, made sure she could wake up) and we were on our way. they said to pay close attention to how she was doing 12-24 hours after the injury because that is another period that problems can show up, but she was her usual self yesterday.

ok, hopefully we won't have any more incidences like this!